Long Firelight Poems

Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me...

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Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here?among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes,...

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LOVE POEMS II

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch: original poems and translations about passion, desire, lust, sex, dating and marriage. On an amusing note, my steamy Baudelaire translations have become popular with the...

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Toddlers' Exploration: 

Cardboard drum and a thunderous beast
With playful roars in tiny fists and feasts.
Fleeting wings glide to dreams just out of reach
Soaring through tales of barnyard Waddles and Squeaks.
Moo! Quack! Giggles tumble and bump.
Flaps...

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I. Sighting

I saw you  
through refracted light-  
a prism of chance  
splitting ordinary into spectrum.  
Wind-tangled hair  
terra cotta and rosemary beneath your nails  
the scent of soil and...

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So frightened of what lies ahead
You're my firelight, shining in my feline eyes
You light the road for me to tread 
You're my candlelight, refining the truth from the abominable lies
You burn away my wretched mistakes...

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NOTE: The Natchez Trace is the Nashville bar where I met my future wife Beth. We invented a game called "twister pool" which involved billiards, drinking and a fair bit of physical contortion ...


At the...

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A Halloween Tale
  By Lee Bragan 

Darkness creeps across the land,
The midnight hour is close at hand.
A night of evil awaits us all
On whom will Death choose to call?
There’s no place to hide till...

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The bones of winter cracked the ice black, coal black night.
A hoary wind spits frost crystals that dazzle and blur the sight.
Boney fingers of bare deciduous wood, scratch against the eaves
as the stranger's tread crackles...

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Glowing days that were once red-cheeked and ripe with promise,
Are narrowing like tall candles in a church window,
Tapering from the golden stand and the sturdy base,
To the glorious flame and the ever fading light.
The final...

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Glowing days that were once red-cheeked and ripe with promise,
Are narrowing like tall candles in a church window,
Tapering from the golden stand and the sturdy base,
To the glorious flame and the ever fading light.
The final...

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Burn, burn does fables fire, as an impish figure dances,
Around the wild flames of greed, guess, guess my
Uncommon name, by the devil’s hang nailed toe,
Your never guess it mortal woman, and so your
Royal child will...

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The sand is stained red
with our bygone blood,
the blood that brought us from Ararat to the Alti,
a tribe trekking intrepidly through the Eurasian terrain,
caravans of Caucasians clad with Celtic tartan twills
plaids upon the pale horse...

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Pretenders in the mouth like lemons.
Hamartia.

Is wishing
Denying?
Do I
Deny You?

A dirge by the pier
is the darkness I hear
when You are not here,
when I tell myself
I will always fear.

Yet You visit, still,
my lightless room
and the Breath of...

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...Then one looked at her sand said, “Let’s have us another ’bout.”
But the man on her horse said, “No, I’m claiming that one now.
In lieu of my share of the gold when all of them...

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1)
In flickered lamp light 

I waited in a delusional fog for you to return

the firelight flickered encouragement to my wandered waltzing

playing out the melodies in ivory and ebony


but only the white notes rose to my...

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The wind came down from the canyon with a quite heat
It was to his back as he faced the crashing waves
He watched the pelicans skimming the rolling surf
The sun warmed sand felt comforting beneath his...

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*  This poem was inspired by the court marshall of Lt. William Calley for his 
leadership in the attack on My Lai, Vietnam.  For more info, see 
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/mylai.htm

Lt. Willy on Trial

Tiny warm beads...

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CHAPTER 10b, Hiatus, continued

Till a pebble thrown by Matto
Struck the creature on its forehead 
And it hissed in indignation 
Slinking off into the darkness 
 
When the morning sun resurfaced 
In a spectral ocean sunrise...

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Glowing days that were once red-cheeked and ripe with promise,
Are narrowing like tall candles in a church window,
Tapering from the golden stand and the sturdy base,
To the glorious flame and the ever fading light.
The final...

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She screamed  frantically, “My boy is in there!
Somebody, please!  Help Him!”  But nobody cared.
The mob was all running, fleeing the scene,
on her brother’s face the firelight gleamed.

“You have to help Keenan, he’s...

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The best lines always evade me;
I can never say what must be said
to you, 
to her, 
to them...
to myself.

Mortality whispers in my ear.
Mortality dances about my seer
Allows it. Justly, for justice
folding up my life's essence,
putting...

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She’d not heard the horses approach her village in the plains,
had known nothing or war of death until their arrows rained,
fiery streak against the night, set flame to thatch and straw,
scrambling from her father’s hut,...

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Pretty like the crystalline canyon rocks -
   Fair like a deer wandering in the morn' -
With the Great Spirit as a faithful witness
   A baby girl named Red Feather was born...

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Glowing days that were once red-cheeked and ripe with promise,
Are narrowing like tall candles in a church window,
Tapering from the golden stand and the sturdy base,
To the glorious flame and the ever fading light.
The final...

Read More