Long Flannel Poems

Kerris  spoke to Damian the junior 
Bartender on the phone.  "Yeah, it's 
8 o'clock now.  I'll be there  at 9 to
Open.  Meet me there at that time."
He smiled happily thinking...

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Oh look here— behold a dandelion woman
the original wild flower!
I go where I want to go
I grow where I want to grow —
don't matter if   y o u   say no

dandelion wine...

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ELLY MAY


poem by: Maria Williams

T'was the night before her birthday and Elly May
Still in the office putting stuff away
In her horn rimmed glasses and grey flannel suit
She was the epitome of perfection, the essence of...

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What’s up with Santa
                               ...

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Banks o' Doon
by Robert Burns
modern English translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, banks and hills of lovely Doon,
How can you bloom so fresh and fair;
How can you chant, ecstatic birds,
When I'm so weary, full of care!
You'll...

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Watching her board bathed in fog at the station
Spectacles slide down the bridge of his nose
Usually a blur, not in this situation
Smudges can’t hide every beauty she shows

Lugging a satchel in high heels and cotton
In...

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In the year of 1880,
in Watertown, northern New York,
a man walked into an almshouse,
looked no different from other poor.

The man’s dress was quite slovenly,
he was clad in rough leather boots,
wore flannel strips around his neck,
and...

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"Ronnie, honey,"Do you really believe that's it all about the numbers as far as our
God is concerned?" Asked her concerned husband, Bob.

"Yes, Bobby, sweetie  pie, I really do and boy oh boy Tommy, you...

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When I worked as a carpenter there was an iron clad rule.If you woke up to a drizzling rain you came to work in hopes it would soon abate.
However,if it was pouring and the old...

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Here comes the snow, oh how beautiful, white and fluffy are the flakes as they fall from the sky. Not used to seeing this twice within a month’s time frame, yet still amazed by its...

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The rain began to fall steady and slow.The fall rains that ushered in the real drop in temporatures.

Having assembled her pine boughed canopy to dissipate and scatter the plume and the partial entrance covering the...

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Francie folded with the first contraction .Sam had watched her eyes widen as the
amniotic fluid soaked her dress.The contractions began immediately as if a starter pistol had been fired.She could tell this time was not...

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Ever Jumped A Train?

I have and it took me on a ride I'll never forget,
A journey like no other I have ever taken.
Traveling along those rails in open door box car,
Watched beauty of many states...

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I am standing outside my bedroom, on the precipice of lost innocence.
Wide eyed, and barefoot on cold hardwood.
Someone is hammering on our front door.
My father, looking a bit annoyed, shuffles anxiously down the stairs.
Tussled hair,...

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Prayer to the Stone of Sobriety

Under a purple flannel-like sheet, but not as soft; 
As warm as flannel-but hotter,
I am sweating.
The flannel shroud soaks up my sweat like my liver soaks up venom

I see angry...

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There was something spectacular
about a winter, long and hard,
on the Miles River.
Some days will never be the same.

Greying skies, heavy hung
with crystal burdens
of the wind, and air. Twenty above,
after sunset, zero.

And the snow was the...

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Part Two

Do you remember your run-up to the crease
      your Lindwall-delivery dragging the clasping flannel round hobbled boots
your anger
           ...

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To a Louse
by Robert Burns
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hey! Where're you going, you crawling hair-fly?
Your impudence protects you, barely;
I can only say that you swagger rarely
Over gauze and lace.
Though faith! I fear you dine but...

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As the old couple were placed in a nursing home the other day,
   They were placed in different rooms on separate floors so far away.
Their children thought it would be for the best,
...

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Summertime is finally fleeting
and oddly, though, I am not sad.
Yes, the fields will soon be emptied
of pastel-colored flowers and buzzing bees
and wading knee-deep in tall, wild grass
as the sun takes its time in setting,
late into...

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Summertime is finally fleeting
and oddly, though, I am not sad.
Yes, the fields will soon be emptied
of pastel-colored flowers and buzzing bees
and wading knee-deep in tall, wild grass
as the sun takes its time in setting,
late into...

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Beautiful women stridding along
beach front properties
after the cruel april showers have rolled through
damaging and overflooding the hanging geraniums,
and the despise of jealous boys
rolling through hemlock, with trousers stained with sand,
they gaze like dogs looking at...

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The theme park was crowded. Elephants on roller coasters, mosquitos bracing the water slide, ferrets enjoying the ferris wheel and leopards shooting crack in the gallery. A myriad of personification and abundance of fairy tailed...

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Christmas is creeping in.
I’ve seen my first quality street tin. 
The John Lewis advert is out
And the motorised reindeers about. 

Shop windows glitter and glow,  
Ladbrookes give odds on the snow, 
The eyes ...

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I was in a cave and my best friend and I were trapped with just one way out,
And there was a tiger,
And my best friend said lie down and we’ll hide,
So we hid,
And we were...

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