Long Flinty Poems

Inevitable death defines afterlife - deux

Flinty stones figuratively rolling inside
whooping out that primal 
binaural beat of your drum
ma mind haphazardly 
ricocheting axon to neuron
inducing inxs of chaos 
wreaking entropy beheld 
by beauty and the beast
enveloping...

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She was having a certain level of difficulty discerning the exact moment it had started. She knew it started somewhere…everything else did. Maybe it had been during the summer that she could not smile. Not...

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stones
by michael r. burch


i.
far below me lies a village
with its houses hewn from stone
and though Everyman who lives there
bravely claims he’s not alone,
i can tell him, yes u are!
for u cannot touch the stars
no matter...

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"Odysseus and The Siren"



There he is 
like Odysseus 
bound to the mast of his ship
cursive words dispatched 
through aether to 
the somnolent nodding
in their stock 
he avoids full brace
the Siren’s enchantment
a song that sings 
his...

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DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE EMOTIONAL ISSUES
I was born in a land far, far away called... home. 
Not yet still-born. 
A place of iced mountain mazes, 
that were once warm, like an oasis of...

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pioneer esprit de corps front tier brisk.
*     *     *     *     *     *   ...

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(William Hammer, Thomas Alva Edison's assistant,
has reached the end of his tolerance.  His boss is
planning to electrocute an elephant for a publicity
stunt.)

If he goes through with this, the dam has burst.
I'm done with him....

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It juts out by the river road,
traffic passes it each morn,
what’s left of the old aqueduct,
something stately, yet still forlorn.
The rock, with no mortar, was set
so fine it would make Incas proud,
precise enough to still...

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I Can't Wait For Death

And finally take one last breath
where hands of Seth
Thomas no longer clock
freed at last from cataclysmic aftershock
reverberating thru every baited cell
after quaking mine flinty bedrock
well nigh since birth zapping bloodstock,

an existence...

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They didn't want Jesus Christ for their king,
     being meek was an utterly detestable thing
They didn't want Him for their king,
     what conquering tales could this man...

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What the Hell it doesn't matter

it's not like your being battered.

Your heart beats faster, your nerves on edge,

what the Hell is it doing to your head?

Your eyes deceive, you cannot believe,

if you should jump for...

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“There is a mine for silver    
and a place where gold is refined.
                       ...

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We stagger on the slopes heading home
We had been bar friends and home could be anywhere in between
As long as little comfort settled in, home we were
This time, in the crack of dawn,
Rudely woken up...

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sometimes I wish to cut myself open
just to see what is hidden inside
how lucky I am
even Jack the Ripper would bypass me
that's how lucky I am
but I wish to see
what am I made of
what's so...

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More rocks than soil on those flinty hills
Where he tilled the grudging land.
He chopped the sprouts and manned the plow,
With cracked and callused hands.
No stranger to adversity,
Through hard and bitter years
He wet the dusty, stony...

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When the radio played
And you thought you could win me
with a handwritten note declaring your pain
in my absence and with hubris 
of your youth, you told me of the softness of my mouth, you knew...

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And when will the tides turn against confident indifference?!

When will humanity cease
To throw cats against curiosity’s silver coated dagger

Another played out song
Another dramatic lyric
Shifting embellished overtones
With deteriorating tact

They spit posthumous awakenings
As divinity laced smiles, wither...

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They taught me at Sunday school
that the Spirit's wind; and cool.
On a night cool and windy,
my eyes were wide and flinty.

Through translucent window pane, 
jiggled a confused weather vane,
shy which direction to face;
excitement set to...

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It's quiet now, too quiet for Spring:
Sere-brown matted grasses huddle close,
Clinging tightly to patches of congealed Earth,
Nature's chill bosom flinty and unyielding. 
No wind yet whips up tremble in bush or tree--
Branches too-long barren of...

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High tide
 May, warm sunlight, mild breeze and under
a parasol casts a cooling shade.
The hum of insect
A barking dog
White clouds on blue velvet
The peace is restless a sense of danger
the big powers have been banging...

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Shattered are the dreams of the wanting, as they live in their broken homes 
Bodies wracked with pain, spirits crushed as they live out those wasted lives

Accumulations of sorrow, all these and more, in the...

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the edge of town arrives quickly
you hang an inscrutable left
only to discover
one beat-up clapperboard hulk
hanging over tall corn
as if time and land-wrecked it
or
you drive to the end of
a suburban tract
and while waiting for the lights
a...

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How I wish for that cold and flinty stare
the one that tells you 'I don't care'
to hold another, at arm's length
would seem to need so little strength

But, I am weak and've not the heart
it seems...

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The light in my life has slowly sputtered out
What began as a flinty spark of infatuation,
Flounders in ever-growing feelings of doubt.
First I thought about nothing but the sensations
The warming qualities of your tender embrace,
But now...

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Dragons with their brimstone throats
burned millions
before bursting into combustible myths.
Did we once make fire
or did the fire make us?    Burning,
burning, burning
until ‘forever’ became extinct, became
smoke behind the ramparts of heaven.
More burning, torching...

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