Long Flaps Poems

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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Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!



Eternal Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm...

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Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have never been accepted for publication. Here are a...

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Here he stands, Edwardian vogue, sometimes with his spats, 
sometimes with his brogues below his dungarees. With rounded collar points and tie, and jacket donned below this flying suit, his waste is tied with simple...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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Because the charity of my native place
Obliged me, the broken branches I the picked up
Them giving back him, who was to debase.

Then we finally reached where had to leap
From the second turn to third, and...

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Thanksgiving, 1971,
a parachute pilgrim approaches Northwest Flight 305
as Dan Cooper, anonymous businessman,  anarchist airborne, 
black suit, black sunglasses, a black tie
and a black briefcase broaching black motives,
Portland to Seattle, prison or criminal pantheon, 
before...

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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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Then from Dyndoeth came another question,  
     “Now that we know the animals are capable of moving through the sky, what about the sleigh.”
     “Have you...

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Off fish hill Daylight saving time 2025

min(no) newt effect on me.

As part and parcel of terpsichorean repertoire,
one whirling dervish 
flaps his wings at the speed of sound.

With twenty three hours
Sunday March 9th, 2025
essentially 2:00:00 to...

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Tasting Africa (One L****ick at a Time) Part 2
(Though the title's a joke, my limericks are not!)

5. Yet Another World Wonder
Feel like now I am older I need to admit
A Safari to Africa costs quite...

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Along a quiet river to nowhere were styx lean like broken crosses. The wind is gentle with a sent of quite decay or is that brimstone in these sinister currents, that spin! A black river...

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Song from Aella: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

MYNSTRELLES SONGE ("MINSTREL'S SONG")

O! sing unto my roundelay,
O! drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more...

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"Chaos Theory"



The Message is sent on a breeze
Fire eats the wounds of a Mother

Her skin blisters
cracks and peels 

Her children inhale a different pollen
Drones bark messengers like Bowie's Diamond Dogs

Tables now turn
machines are giving orders...

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She was grace in its purest form. Thinking not and caring not of her 
destination, she soars across the angelic sky on her tiny golden wings. Yet her 
feet never left the cold laminated floor....

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COMING HOME

She was an airport
on the flats by the river,
her signage, lights and markings
outlining corridors that couldn’t
be seen in the sunlight of day
A black silhouette from a full harvest
moon, he landed in her life full...

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Bartender Oh Bartender
(a stout rendition of O Captain! My Captain!
Perfect rhythmic rhyme with tonic 
when the doth ale).

Mine eyes espy the glory per the ending 
of another work day beckon Baileys Irish Creme
with Absolut certainty...

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                                  ...

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"The perils of a possible crash landing with a touch of humor to end it" 
~~ The Poet ~~
" Burlesque is poetry that treats a serious subject, humorously, or is simply a trivial story." ~~...

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Ted the Tortoise told his wife he’ll nip around the block
She said if you nipped anywhere it would be quite a shock
He said I’ve got a skateboard with a power-pack on board
It’s not the latest...

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V.
She knew he was right, and had little choice,
winter had set in, travel was hard,
but Reid had killed elk, frozen meat to spare,
the ponds he worked were never that far.

Mink kept her guard up when...

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Three Ice-Dragons of Zaath, are faring South,
They strip the landscape barren of all Love.
Each holds a lifeless Champion in its mouth,
Each imitates the wolf, and mocks the Dove…

Beware their icy maws, their shepherds’ clothing,
For they...

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A zip lining tree makes about as much sense as a robotic hamster. Neurotic neanderthal neon numbers neither neutralise nor nut needed narcotic nymph nights. Oh wow a triangular pendulum. Must swing around on that....

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I walked in and was hit by the familiar smell of fear and disinfectant 
then wrapped my sweater tighter from the cold and discomfort. 
I glanced fleetingly into desperate, tearful eyes
bruised egos, painful cries and...

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Pigeons flutter in the park
eating refuse from the grass.
Noon comes; the hours pass.
Leaves fall; the sky grows dark.
Silence reigns throughout the park.
A crumpled headline, forgotten toy --
and then, -- and then a far-off bark.
In the...

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