Long Fugitive Poems

Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in...

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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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Genesis 4:12 (KJV) “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”

Yesterday spreads its wings…
Across the timeless expanse of...

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Der Abschied (“The Parting”)
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We embrace;
my fingers trace
rich cloth
while yours encounter only moth-
eaten fabric.
A quick hug:
you were invited to the gay soiree
while the minions of the "law" relentlessly pursue...

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Sheriff Koplin was talking with Tom on how it had been a quiet week
Not one crime had been reported for the town of Milton Creek
Then a US Marshal knocked on the door and then came...

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 Continued from Part 1 

The forgery of Multitudes between the Silhouettes
(and discarded cigarettes,
neath the haunted parapets)
mock my lonely echoed steps
         – mock my lonely echoed steps...

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The Goddess of Love


The exuberant fire that burns within my soul,
In that first embrace of a lovers smile;
Shall forever be held, in equality to the power of love.
Her servant shall forever wish for her luminous,...

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She’s out there chasing a cricket

Through bush, through shrub & through thicket

Together they hop

Fugitive, cop

But when she gets it, she just wants to lick it!
 

A cat whose vet took his eye

Just cannot quite understand...

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I was a zealous environmental scientist, preserving green on our blue planet;
To benefit all animals, plants and people, under sunset skies of pomegranate.

I strived hard to reverse pollution, found in vast seas and in azure,...

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The first thing I remember hearing 
Was a car radio with a country song playing
A man singing while my mom was steering 
A song about heartache and pain
That’s the day the good boy in me...

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Reporting live on the soup, with Americas MOST. WANTED. POETS.
 Standing here with our host John, 
With an exclusive update on criminal poets, captured and on the run.
Switching over to you John,. "Thank you P.D.,...

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Oh, would you be left behind, if the Rapture of the Bride of Christ
were to be raptured (caught up and taken away)?  Would you be
left behind to face the seven year tribulation period? The...

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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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Zenith University   

I am a proud graduate  
of Zenith University,  
where the quality stays on  
until the little dot  
shrinks and goes away.  

I attended that fine institution  
with Tom and Jerry,  
Heckl, Jeckl, Mickey, Minnie,  
Da?y, Donald, Daisy,  
Huey, Dewey, Louie,  
Speedy, Wile E., Gumby, Pokey,  
Yogi, Boo Boo, Dino, Chucko,  
Hobo Kelley, Lassie, Bozo,  
Betty, Barney, Bam Bam Rubble, 
Wilma, Pebbles, Fred,  
Casper, Felix, Sheri? John,  
Gentle Ben, and Mr. Ed.     

Astro, Elroy,  
Judy, George, and Jane--  
Eddie Haskell, Wally Cleaver,  
Mom and Dad and Little Beaver.    

Favorite Martian--Flying Nun,  
James Arness--smoking gun, 
Spanky and Alfalfa,  
Larry, Moe, and Curly.

Tests consisted   
of posted patterns.
To see those,  
you had to get up early  
like Jack LaLanne and Buns of Steel, 
Captain Kangaroo.  

Mid-morning classes included  
Monte Hall (quite a deal), 
Bob the Barker (not the builder). 

Allen Ludden passed the words, ...

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The  sirens are gone now
                             ...

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What nations would really benefit by a further split and a racial divide between black people and white people? Our national enemies, who are concentrating in increasing it, and causing a race war in the...

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Chapter 2, The 1492. 
That’s where they like to begin. They skip over the terrorists activities of theft, plunder, and genocides. When we naively thought freedom was free, We paid our lives for it during...

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SILVER STAR

I have long since lost Hope,
because my paths are so endlessly long and aimless,
as if sculpted out of my restless spirit
in the long nights of reverie.
You know, Lord... I used to have my Hope.
It...

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If raindrops rise in leu of fall
would you seek the meaning overall?
Would spectacles endow with a clarity of fog
would you follow tangled lines of a rearward call?

Inevitable advance to stepping backwards
and dreams which mock to...

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A Fugitive
Bus Stop Overland Park, Kansas   7:35 PM

A furrowed brow and furtive eyes
that refuse to engage another,
striding quickly through the crowd
and putting people between him
and the police car.
He is hardly the drifter or...

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Mortality forces me to confront the inevitable...

Though feeling one among the basket
of deplorables, yours truly, albeit groggy
from unsettling frightful dreams also rather
shy to summon courage amidst adversity took
deep breaths (envisioning egotism inflating
confidence, whereat, I never...

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Born with a complex like a tormented fugitive in a constant flight from a life of acceptance, his Life is filled with questions and complexities. There is no room 

for blame. In a secret place,...

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my lottery
gentlemen need loaves bread
others wishes to be civilized
i myself wishe ur deployed
                      ...

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Historically accurate, narrative poem

25 June, 1876 - Valley of the Little Bighorn

Nothing stirs this June night, not a summer’s breeze or a breath of life.  All is eerily quiet, and on yonder hillside, shroud...

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I was a planetary climatologist, who studied climate variability and change,
Like sweet variability of stunning, green tulips, in lavish garden rearranged.

Studying the said effects on the biosphere, absorbed so many daily hours,
Like industrious days of...

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