Long Flightless Poems

Beware The Ides of March 2023
 
Ides simply referred to first new moon, 
which usually fell between 
the thirteenth and fifteenth day
of a given month.

The following events all occurred
fifteenth of March 
across span of millenniums.

One:...

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Renee Vivien Translations


Song
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the moon weeps,
illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful,
my memories creep
back to you, wrapped in flightless wings.

It's getting late; soon we will sleep
(your eyes...

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I
The beggar outside the supermarket
You swore was picked up later
In a flashy car
Sat there in the sun for 8 hours
While you pissed & moaned
All the way home
To your bookless
Mausoleum 
With a chlorinated pool
Where one day...

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Cypress trees like evergreen steeples
rise above rows of gravestone woes,
their shadows lie side by side like railroad ties 
across writhing paths banded like snakes;
the gravel birth cords sinuous 
sensing the ground   seeking the...

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""Child's Play""

You go down like rain,
A wishing star in disguise, 
You scream bloody murder 
-the perfect two-face disgrace
Your lips forever stain and reside with Benedict A 
Your eyes hide the truth, like a lost domain...

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             Her adorned stars, crackling overhead 
                ...

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Ten: A New Global Health Scare, 2003
After accumulating reports 
of a mysterious respiratory disease 
afflicting patients and healthcare workers 
in China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, 
Singapore and Canada, 
the World Health Organization 
issues a heightened global...

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Sleep O’Sleep we all must be,
Tucked ourselves between pillows comfy,
While Rough men fought and sacrificed bled,
That’s what the Great Winston Churchill said,

All is talk and talk with words,
None does deeds, all flightless birds,
For those who...

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Society is rife with statements of misinformation, fallacy and contradiction
To say otherwise would be to argue that our settlement was a pleasant eviction
If you are to believe what is in the following first lines
Then perhaps...

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this is my song,
  my love song of you,
    my land, my heart

             love for green ferns
  ...

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Chapter 12 (c) The Fireflower (continued)

So forthwith it was decided 
That upon the next day’s dawning 
They would send a party swiftly 
Inland by a river valley  
 
They would climb to highland forest...

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With canoe and hook of a jawbone
  below a great fish Maui snared,
and his brothers half-crazed behaving
  leapt and gouged in frenzy craving.
From Palliser Bay to Cape Reinga 
 (departing place of the...

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A single branch, clawed and pecked, fickle and straining,
Lonely Nestling and father, paw and peck at their home
Lonely branch, spasms in the wind
Nestling and father paw and peck, yearn and whimper
These Flightless Birds, on a...

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ever since Homo Sapiens didst
   insinuate, elbow and barge
humanity at the mercy sans, small, medium
   (Strunk and White) elemental forces at large

which indiscriminate merciless whims extant
ask Homer Simpson or Marge
g'head and...

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Who will weep for my noble prince? Who will cry
With belly swollen with sorrow, and tears long
As the Black River? Who will hear the clouds sigh
And turn black over red clay, and being strong
Not feel...

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“Freedom is just another word for nothin left to lose.
Feeling good was easy Lord, when he sang the blues” ~ Janis Joplin ~

    Life was filled with laughter.
    ...

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I see it now
flying low
over silver-spumed waves.

I am a watcher
I can enlarge the picture
        zoom in
look into bright midnight eyes
        as...

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3 
Pay attention! 
Important chicken poetry coming up, 
though no binary fantasies shall deconstruct 
into raucous biddy enjambment. 


4 
Grandfatber always kicked Grandmother's chickens away 
while he sat whittling under the Oak, 
Those ruddy, Cherokee...

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Our dreams, our callings and our reason for being
We need to hold fast to them if success we hope to be seeing
For if we lose our dreams, those core longings that help us to cope
We'll...

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Resurrections lone fallen spiritual being, kneeling within the darkness of mine
Own tormented soul, broken, fractured at fetters ivory appendages, a flightless
Angelic Dark winged angel standing alone, weeping in the nights blackened clouds of utter blindness,...

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This poem is based on the painting of George Frederick Watts in 1886 
                     ...

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If you were to find an old 
calendar, strap it to a hospital 
bed,
tie it down by its weak ends, 
and then sea section the belly 
of it's pages, you'd find the 
winding roads of...

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Better safe than sorry?
Fallacy.
I say, better sorry than safe.
Even if brought, calamity.
Safe never dreams.
Safe never changes.
Safe found no new thing, new places,
a new people's strangeness.
New cultures, new stars, new planets.
Safe hides in fortified sameness.
Safe only...

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The more I learn, the more
     I realize how little I know…
which insightful, gutsy,
     entrancing, catchy apothegm

     attributed to Socrates by way of...

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Too busy they were
the passing conglomerate
focused on pavement
eyes ever forward
with their get there stare of hedonistic servitude
trailing their marching tempo of mobile phones
hard in the glass
hard to their homes
disguising all those battered egos
the ranks and...

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