Long Extended Poems

"Oak" 

The guardians
stood around and 
shook their heads

great thoughts 
quivering 
from the ground, roots up, 

as if to walk 
confidently 
with great armies

yet hesitation 
was witnessed
in their waving gestures

perplexed 
and touching 
green crowns, 

there they...

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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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Instruction
by Michael R. Burch

Toss this poem aside
to the filigreed and the wild tide
of sunset.

Strike my name,
and still it is all the same.
The onset

of night is in the despairing skies;
each hut shuts its bright bewildered eyes.
The...

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Poems about Poems VI

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood?
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the Muse
with reprimands of Dr. Seuss.

The...

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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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It had been a hellish week.

On Monday
my lonely and tired AfricanAmerican husband
told me, as gently as possible,
that what I had hoped was a temporary separation
is to be extended into perpetuity.

This separation had been scheduled to...

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Beckoning
by Michael R. Burch 
 
Yesterday the wind whispered my name
while the blazing locks
of her rampant mane
lay heavy on mine.
And yesterday
I saw the way
the wind caressed tall pines
in forests laced by glinting streams
and thick with...

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You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
 
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened...
 
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching...
 
You...

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No Mark
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes, 
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before...

here where you have...

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Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

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Systems,
ecosystems,
and ego body-systems,
patriotic systems
and feminist systems
mutually improve,
grow more robust,
resilient,
resonant when WinWin relationships
between diversely paradigmatic elements
within said system
and between unsaid systems
improve,
grow more healthy wealth together
well-greased co-operative channels
and web-structures
WinWin overwhelming WinLose
competing smaller self-centered investments.

Capital small-self promotion tends...

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There is nothing weaker than water
But none is superior to it in overcoming the hard,
For which there is no substitute.
(Laotse, "Nothing Weaker Than Water", Lin Yutang, trans.)

That weakness of mind and body overcomes strength
And uniting...

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Let me speak clearly with you
dear religious and atheist Trumpians,

A fool in executive office
is a leader
only in foolish directions.

A rich thief
is the worst thief
as survival motives
are absent,
so self-thrival motives
remain piratically rampant.

An intellectual prostitute
to feel-good AmericaFirst...

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So, if I understand correctly,
you want to respond to inevitable energy descent
by upgrading incentives for cooperative communication,
positive information expansion,
research and regenerative design,
implementation,
and ecopolitical evaluation strategies?

Yes,
because we achieved current WinWin cooperative communication
and organic networking capacities
by virtue...

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I am fairly new to this Norwick community.
If I recall correctly
we have about forty thousand households here
where the Connecticut River
conjoins the Mohegan and Iroquois Rivers;
originally deep rich virgin eco-forest 
of and for harmonic rhythm and...

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Monks and nuns,
ascetics and miscellaneous humble proletariat folks,
were taught custody of the eyes,
to show respect for those older
and/or wiser
and/or more supremely royal,
and/or in other positions of merited or inherited authority,
to avoid appearing too curious
too available
too...

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Why do questions hope to end with answers
while answers seem to never end 
without yet more questions?

As a case in point...

How are the Case Studies of economic and political history
different than Einstein's Thought Experiments?

Wait a...

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Date:   July  2049

Early morning combinations 
Personal hygiene conversations
And kisses in most of the Hakim 
Households. Damian was negotiating 
For properties in Virginia namely 
Virginia Beach. He wanted the 
Prosperous realty. He spoke...

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It's all frustratingly LeftBrain relativistic,
even nihilistic in its darker 
ruminating 
paranoid about chaotic outcomes form,
said Einstein's post-millennial ghost.

So its all synergetic fractal 4D equivalent SpaceTime,
said Fuller,
in co-arising nondual P = N(NP)/2 (0)-Core response.

Interesting you should...

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A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the darkening...

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I know you invited the Brothers to side-line along,
but only if we are here to listen;
Don't speak.

Yet I may have credential for qualifying voice.
For I, like some of you,
know what it means to develop cooperative,
too...

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A few years back,
in the prior millennium,
1993 to be more precise
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
born without a stage name
had his book entitled "The Evolving Self" published,
by which he meant The ReGeneratively Nutritious Flowing Self,
but he was probably shy...

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A cool February evening Damian was
Asleep. He felt somebody rubbing 
His chest. "Leave me girl." Polly
Rolled out of bed and announced 
"Damian, you should move in with me!
I want you to move in! Wake up...

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Not to play any blame game,
in this our new co-evolutionary capacity
for LeftBrained Language Enculturation
long become YangDominant associated
with 'civilization',
co-arising anthro-centrism,
including Earth's newer history
of revolution by Empirical Elitism.

Processes of empirical empire supremacy,
kill or be killed,
became not really...

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