Long Flashing Poems

Sappho fragment #155
translation by Michael R. Burch 

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

*

Sappho fragment #156
translation by Michael R. Burch 

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds



Flying
by Michael R. Burch

I shall rise
and try the bloody wings of thought
ten thousand times
before I fly...

and then I'll sleep
and waste ten thousand nights
before I dream;

but when at last...
I soar the...

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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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Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

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The Tender Weight of Her Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

The tender weight of her sighs
lies heavily upon my heart;
apart from her, full of doubt,
without her presence to revolve around,
found wanting direction or course,
cursed with the thought...

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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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Imagine,
said Yin to distraught Yang,
never able to get quite enough of himself,
never enough time to fully become his ego-potentiality

Imagine this day opens a new rhetorical event,
a new day of conversation between Ego
and those you live...

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Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux

These are poetic forms similar to villanelles, with refrains (repeated lines) and sometimes double refrains.



Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot...

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Salve
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9-11

The world is unsalvageable ...
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as...

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Prose Poems

Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost?lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is...

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"Oh, indeed she was, young man ... I mean Greg. It IS Greg, if I recall correctly?"
     "Yes. Or you can call me True Friend if you like." I turned to...

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Note to Readers of Previous Versions:
There are so many new vignettes scattered throughout the poem that I hope you will reread the whole thing! There are new GEMS, improvements to previous verses and improved footnotes...

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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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These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems about the earth, climate change, global warming, extinction events, and mankind's role on an endangered world ...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons?
the ones you trim to...

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alarm goes off*
I sit straight up startled and scared
Just my alarm, I hit the button
Get up and go to the bathroom
I brush my teeth with my toothbrush
Scratchy, painful bristles
Toothpaste that makes me sick
With the strong...

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I am an Outlander
Who lives on a high hill
Overlooking a man-made lake
That once was a rapidly rushing river
Along whose banks the Ozarks Bluff Dwellers and the Osage and then Delaware
Hunted, fished, and created shelter
For their...

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“The Scorpion’s Touch”

Under glass
the sound cuts out sharp
just like under water
and we run out of breath 
like insects running around 
frantically out of time
we are magnified 
in our tight enclosures

internally observed
the external turns away
two heart...

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Our lusty voice was in the tramp of narrow, winding,
     Scree-littered, deep-rutted roads;     
 Ravens, uttering guttural croaks, slow-wheeling above      
 ...

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The Story so far continued from 'Visitor'…
An attractive extra-terrestrial female researcher sent to a remote island to observe earth and beam back her findings is struggling with unfamiliar, alien romantic emotions. Even though she is...

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The World has been playing a game
Oh what a shame
The world has been playing a game
This is insane
Leaders come and leaders go
Leaving me to continue the show
Leaders come and leaders go
Repeating the show of long...

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Mission Control, this is Flight Z924693744, do you read?
We're having some technical trouble. How should we proceed?

We have spotted a planet, that appears to be suitable to abort;
But, to return to earth, we will need...

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"What sort of world
be home to those
who goes about
judging all souls
of what they do
be right or wrong
and how'd they know
of this-and-that
be bad or good
be alsoooo, true
lest they were told
from the same lot
who walked the walk
and...

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"Conceits"



Such conceits
as veils between 
our windowed worlds 
torn torrential incomplete

mayst thou watch and learn 
the one I spawned, 
strength beats weakness
carried soft and harsh

one direction or the other
strength and weakness
both carried soft and harsh
ego and...

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I knew that  I had to go somewhere but I did not know where 
I knew I had to go somewhere that was not  very far from here
So I  put on my...

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Rum was feeling playful so he went to find a mouse
He looked in every nook and cranny right throughout the house
But all the mice were sound asleep for it was dark outside
And then Rum saw...

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