Long Glance Poems

Happy Valentine's Day
                                ...

Read More

Blue Hunter's Moon of the Festival of Lights.
And the day of Vengeance of our Holy One to comfort all those who mourn.

Isaiah 61:3-11
I Proclaim the acceptable Generation or Year and Day of Yehoshua also known...

Read More

This is for the Contest - 'Titanic - Fare Thee Well' Sponsored by Tom Woody.
                    ...

Read More

Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers I

I translated the first six Native American poems for my father when he chose to enter hospice and end his life by not taking dialysis …


Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation...

Read More

“The True Mother”

What part of a heart
in another could one trust
when betrayal comes
like a silver bullet, words and deeds
sharp piercing to burrow 
bleed out Life’s dreams 
rust crumbles to dust

Virulent apathy spreads 
Betrayal’s destruction 
hand...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

The title of this talk today,
"Win-Win Politics of New Feminist Economics"
suggests questions,
more than emasculating 
definitively deductive
reductive
answers.

Would you imagine
a minority-identified Buddhist,
more likely as a feminist
or culturally comfortable
with political and economic Left-brain domination,
monopolistic competing toward total self-consuming
reiteratively...

Read More

Once upon a weedy lawn
At Cedar Oaks Retirement Home
There sat my mother, weak and old
On an afghan knit to block the cold.

It was summer, but in mom's grey eyes
Was winter, when all around us dies.
I...

Read More

Poems about Things that Break I
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

Read More

Poems about Things that Break III
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

Read More

Pain settles in quite instantly your senses 
are totally unprepared for this graveness
the notion to sleep sets in like an energetic 
twilight phase the injury abruptly strangles 
thought my ears are always ringing with this...

Read More

THE INNER CHAMBER

Please.  Stop holding back on me.

Like a child standing at the neighborhood ice cream truck, arm outstretched, eyes huge, mouth watering.

I stand here longing to slip underneath your decades of cold-rolled steel...

Read More

"Smooth Big Cat"



He was one of those guys you just knew would be a dud. "Be nice", she said to herself.

She met him on the upswing from the abyss of a dismally closed final chapter....

Read More

Where do we come in
					in medias res  not knowing nor caring when
doesn’t everybody pine being number one we leave behind our lives in pages  pictures  or else make for images of what...

Read More

Sonnets LXXI-LXXX

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you...

Read More

So many people and the various sores
Intoxicated in such a way my eyes,
That wanted open to crying their doors.

But Virgil told : “What for you look this guise?
Why now your sight is so carefully brought
Down...

Read More

Bharathidasan’s “Pulikku nay enta muulai” (To the Tiger, the Dog knows no safe dwelling!) translated by T. Wignesan 

Bharathidasan (1891-1964) was a self-proclaimed disciple of the eminent Brahmin poet: Cuppiramania Bharathiyar (cf. two poems of...

Read More

Here I stand outside this door heart beating out of my chest, knowing that once I cross this threshold there will be nothing of me left
I got myself into this predicament I wanted this so...

Read More

She was always so insecure, as far back as I can remember she never realized her true worth, she let people use her, and never cared about getting hurt
If everyone else was happy and smiling,...

Read More

I met a proper woman in a proper pub on a Monday in Peoria. It was noon, time for lunch, and we were sitting stool to stool over very large burgers at a long mahogany...

Read More

Deliberately recognizing the sun against the moonbeams
I see your eyes gleam and your happiness screams
Into my eager ears over the years and I’m tension-whelmed with the tears I shed
Hanging at the last thread, giving in...

Read More

'Continental Drift' - The Metaphor

In the seventies (1), few people dreamed ‘it’ was true,
guessed by scientists first when rough coastlines compared (2)
matched like parts of a puzzle (a jigsaw), found place
that joined ‘drop-offs’ waves hid...

Read More

“I don't know anything about that.  I just do what I must.”
Bréagán's smile was sad but understanding.  He knew what it was like to be pushed to do what seemed impossible.  He...

Read More

I'm very lucky...writing poetry soothes my soul -


Rhonda was the only child of Ron and Debby Baker. 
Debby was a widow.  It was 1952…
And having been away from ‘41 to ‘43 -
fighting on the...

Read More