Long Feathers Poems

Dandelions…
They flutter, now I see
Fiery lions…
They're dancing with me
Sunlight…
Come out and shine down 
Moonlight…
Shun out my darkened frown

I am the infinitesimal stars in the tranquil, terrestrial night
I am the scars minutes before the sunlit dawn...

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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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I.
He was patient very-very
with child's tenderness in eyes
yellow winged angel's unwary,
He was living quiet in skies.
Without disputes, without roughness, 
without want to weep and moan,
He was dreaming among heartless
building cloud castles alone.
He was waking up...

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Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch

May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leave us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but her thorn.


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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State of the Art (IV)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...”  — W. ...

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“Éagmais croí a dhíscaoileadh ar gach eagla.
Faoi dhíon taobh istigh de na blianta seo.
Fanacht i bhfianaise, a dhíscaoileadh ar gach eagla.
Ós rud é go ndearnadh tú a chaitheamh.
Briseadh an tost seo”



"An Bee Cailleach"


She lives to...

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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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Winter
by Michael R. Burch

The rose of love's bright promise
lies torn by her own thorn;
her scent was sweet
but at her feet
the pallid aphids mourn.

The lilac of devotion
has felt the winter hoar
and shed her dress;
companionless,
she shivers—nude, forlorn.

Published...

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Hi.
We don't have a lot of time,
or, well, I guess you do,
but I don't,
so let's plunge right into the first big question:
Which came first, form or function?

False dichotomy. No such thing as a totally dysfunctional...

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Dream of Infinity
by Michael R. Burch

Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then...

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Truth is a feather 
pushed off to the other side.

Truths are a body of feathers
within which our bodies reside.

OK, students of life’s healthiest purposes and meanings,
it’s time to regather, if you would be so kind.

Namaste.

[Silence]

[My...

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Poems about Children IV

Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of 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...

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"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

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Early morning dawn July
"Mallory"  Damian whispered, sliding 
Closer to her. "Mallory" he Whispered 
Again gently caressing. She wanted
To say stop. It was to late
he moved quite quickly. He spread
Like wild fire. Soon consuming her.
The...

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Lake county music company filled with 
slots carney folk real carny folk the little 
pete's illegal gambling road show throughout 
the  Midwest gaming like your idol Frank Peter 
Balistreiri the mad bomber stops Metropolis...

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Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (c. 1460-1530)
loose translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

after William Dunbar

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that...

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THE INNER CHAMBER

Please.  Stop holding back on me.

Like a child standing at the neighborhood ice cream truck, arm outstretched, eyes huge, mouth watering.

I stand here longing to slip underneath your decades of cold-rolled steel...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch



Smoke
by Michael R. Burch

The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in)...

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“Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and...

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Yvonne was very, very, very happy.
She loved her mother.
She loved her brother Phillip.
And she loved swans.
Oh, did she ever love swans!

She loved the way they looked
With their smooth, fluffy feathers,
And colorful beaks of orange, yellow...

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There was a little wind fairy who lived in a meadow near a small town, her name was Estella. Estella had beautiful blue hair like the sky, so her friends called her the little blue...

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Highlight of Goofus and Gallant 
bred within the survival instinct 
of hungry hordes of prey, 
when Earth in the balance 
against an uncomfortable truth 
smug smurf like scavengers. 

     Punishment meted...

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“Here the fierce with the thin pointed tail,
Who passes mountains and breaks arms and walls!
Here who with stench can the world assail!”

So my duke started to talk with his calls;
And hinted then it to get...

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Pellucid pachyderms wade across
the purpling River Manjees
and Tozzath watches from the bank, 
the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud,
his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias,
whose lacey petals flutter
like the wings of long-dead...

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