Long Fiddles Poems

Goodness, I nearly lost my balance on the spiral seashells and broken sea stone chipping matrix.
My quaint obsession with marine life and that skyline paradox blossoming so tantalisingly,  might be a source of some...

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HEROES

Near somber guards, units of children heap 
dead leaves, naive to any else fallen.
Friend, you chuckle, but your posture speaks
of duty on this day of contradictions.

Firefighters bow heads in silent paean, 
while polished trucks stand...

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The Story of History  

Beyond those beaten days’ depleted daylight
Beyond the bathos of a pandemic bondage
With  the resurrected  sashay’s charmed night
Down in the dumps   at the pretentious  proscenium
A ...

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"I Would Be....WOOD"


   "Knock On Me!" or more correct "Knock On WOOD!" You've probably said that and rapped your knuckles against me while saying it! I know you've knocked on me many times...

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“Irish I am,” my mam speaks in hushed tones to the air
She questions still, seeming to her alone
Intones, “Ireland, O Ireland, what are you?
Where do you keep yourself, so I may rediscover you?”
Her speech unknown...

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Once, a long ways away, and a long time ago
Lived a wee little man with his silly pet crow;
And once every day, as the sun went to bed
The wee little man and the crow he...

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"Soft," New, Parade, just begun, ...

cars and beasts ...

roll down the crowd-filled Street.

All the engines "hum."

All the cylinders "run."

Eyes open wide.

Hearts sink.


Under a rising Tropical sun,

the nearby ocean lies gleaming,

washing across the horizon.

Strange, ... glory...

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Dear God!
by Taras Shevchenko
translation by Michael R. Burch

Dear God, disaster again!
Life was once calm, serene...
But as soon as we began to break the chains
Of bondage that enslaved us,
The whip cracked! The serfs' blood flew!
Now, like...

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Sappho Translations IX


Sappho, fragment 17
translation by Michael R. Burch

Hear me, Queen Hera, as your delightful festival nears,
you to whom the sons of Atreus performed vows,
those dazzling kings who did such amazing things,
first at Troy, then...

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This is a true story of seven students
Agone days of those ill-famed fiddles
Musing with drolleries – assiduity on catchy missies
And lamed against educators animalism.
Books usually kept aside but concentration hard on last night
Weekends glossed upon...

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EARLY POEMS XXI - JUVENILIA

Dance With Me
by Michael R. Burch

(circa age 18)

Dance with me
to the fiddles’ plaintive harmonies.
Enchantingly,
each highstrung string,
each yearning key,
each a thread within the threnody,
bids us, "Waltz!"
then sets us free
to wander, dancing aimlessly.

Let...

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(Piece is intended to be the most complex vocabulary gothic ever)

Grandiloquence,
mellifluous pulchritudinous,
gaiety of quintessential moistening serendipity,
bile deluge if you show the sanguinary breath,
crimson waterfall sizzling on lava rock hellscape.

Yclept necrophelia maestra,
macabre tableau,
dips douse abyssal incarnate,
now...

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Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
What are these objects in your frames?
Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
Why must they gotta be the same?

    Cars and busses, traffic lights
    Bicycles...

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Creeping creepy creepers, the crawling trellis
jutting out of everywhere
snaking through country and metropolis
twisting turning in floral bliss
but more like snakes that hiss
But in quietude feign death for self-defense! 

Weeping willows with an unreal surreal sorrow
weeping...

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Let true love find me to be the ever fixed mark of constant gaze
The spectacle of her thrilling eyes, and she to me the dearest prize
A coral when the heart stampedes, or fickle fancy frivolous...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xLdpM01inM&feature=related

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the city's sick scar, fuels my descent, into this abyss, where twisted creatures writhe, in the darkness. cyclops with one eye, on the ball, three-headed puppies, sealed behind glass, strippers selling tickets to the apocalypse....

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"The Folk Dance"
On the backs of well formed muscular miners 
Working hard in the trenches on a daily basis
For the men who need coal, fat cats and such
Dirty, sweaty and tireless toil try to wear...

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The light is low but the music loud,
blaring from fiddles and steel guitars.
The bar is filled with a moderate crowd,
could be anywhere, but here they are,
drinking and two-stepping in this bar.
But the sight of them...

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Why is everyone more worried
      about another's attire
Is their own life so bleak and 
      dire
You help them climb higher and
      higher
While we wallow in their mire
Is their life what you desire
What is it you are...

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Because just like frilly and free curiously whimsical the recently enlightened-yet-quietly-
struggling-humble butterfly, resilient-grasshopper... daintily-grazing-dragonfly's locusts hung 
precariously low dangling-in small but honest-groups-spread-out-all-over-on-the-side and-
cellar-door back-yard and front-porch-door... . Swaying gratefully on-the-ever-defiantly-
flopping-innocently-broken-screens-that-again I tell-you... I thought, I...

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The bayou sky flies a catfish moon over swamp gators 
And cottonmouth vipers. Accordions, fiddles, and rub board vests 
Make their ramble through the undergrowth hot on the trail
Of a sultry midsummer house party in...

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On a Sunday in the evening
The old barn becomes a hall
Social place where every weekend
The town folk go for a ball.
 
The inside is decorated  
Lights are lit, the banners sway
By the walls barrels...

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I can feel my stomach growling and my spirit crawling
The pain in my back begins to grow and my heart begins to glow
The muscles in my chest are inflated, and my adrenaline starts to swim
Bitter...

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I can feel my stomach growling and my spirit crawling
The pain in my back begins to grow and my heart begins to glow
The muscles in my chest are inflated, and my Adrenalin starts to swim
Bitter...

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