Long Gliding Poems

Agony be to society's demise
Labels are for fools, not for the wise
Play the familiar tune of in-unison serenity 
Fatality won't come any time soon, thankfully...

Homeless people were on the news not to long ago...I weep...

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Dusk-gliding swallow, 
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers! 
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A bee emerging
from deep within the peony's hairy recesses
flies off, sated
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

That dying cricket,...

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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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Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!



Eternal Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm...

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World's Longest Love Poem (second edition)


Title: My love my all

Edited by Izunna Okafor


Editor's Note:

Out of their ardency, eighteen poets and poetry lovers identified with the need to give the 2020 Valentine celebration a poetic taste...

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A Stolen Memory
A Mirthful Chorus
By Sy Roth 


We surrounded him 
Asked to let go.
She stared at the misshapen face,
Unshaven sandpapery skin 
Eyelids a tabula rasa
Fluttery sere skin
And we could see the humor blossoming in his...

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Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have never been accepted for publication. Here are a...

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Invocation to the Muse

From the gleaming skin of life’s underbelly, 
sin unreconciled, formed from Nephilim seed,
fleet footed jokers mask pawns into flight;
To the epistle of the Most High.
For in the beginning, the true and only...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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It was September 
Of one thousand 
Nine hundred seven
The end of summer
With apples lying thickly
Under the apple trees
And the smell of Autumn
Covering the grass
Filled with ripe yellow
And orange squash
He was born in a little
Wooden house...

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 The People with Wings
 It was a huge photograph of an eye – an amazing eye that now drew everyone to Mecca.  It was said to belong to one of the ‘People with...

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Two, perhaps three miles out to sea, beyond the reef to Zapatillas,
Bocas’ dual sand-edged footprint jewels with jungle centre trees, 
Francesco’s outboard boat heads out to Caribbean’s deeper blue.

Where sun burns softer gringo skin, but...

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The Dance of Salome
Herod bellowed out the night's festive orders..
"Bring the torches, bring the tables..
more wine, that we may rejoice,  
for tonight we revel in kindred friendship."
Herod strolled onto the terrace, nearly stumbled in...

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How one twenty first century married mortal male (me - Matthew Scott Harris)...
found himself bewitched about Circe,
particularly after reading book title by the same name.

An enchantress and a minor goddess
in ancient Greek mythology and religion
depicted...

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Au revoir oh perilous freedom...

Since pledging my troth
to the missus July 25th, 1996
after the comma error
punctuated mein kampf with disequilibrium.

Ever since the notions
of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
coalesced within the mindscape
attributed to one
or more...

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Then from Dyndoeth came another question,  
     “Now that we know the animals are capable of moving through the sky, what about the sleigh.”
     “Have you...

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yet another iffy coronavirus haiku #1
by michael r. burch

plagued by the Plague
i plague the goldfish
with my verse



yet another iffy coronavirus haiku #2
by michael r. burch

sunflowers
hang their heads
embarrassed by their coronas

I wrote this poem after having...

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One bright night
In the Twilight of day
I awoken to a dream
With in a world of worlds 
Not my self, but still the same
What was it? Never more
What year was it? Forgotten 
One must be careful...

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Matsuo Basho New Haiku Translations

Air ballet:
twin butterflies, twice white,
meet, match & mate
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Denied transformation
into a butterfly,
autumn worsens for the worm
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Dusk-gliding...

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Bee-Real


As I flew up, into the air, 
I looked back one last time at the hive.
All the bees were standing there.
Some were happy and proud to see me go; some were still crying.
As they held...

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I.
You can always tell by the eyes
When they’re starting to go
You’ll fall for a few of their lies
Before you begin to know
And you will just defy it
(But they know you will never go)

They’ll glide through...

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The rest of this poem continued in Part 2
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I had to get out from behind the wall so that my spirit could grow tall
I had to get out from behind the wall to breathe fresh...

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What did the sisters think, when once they found
Their land-struck sibling left them, surface-bound,
To find the prince and try to make him see
That the girl who rescued him was she?
 
Did they know what happened...

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It's styles of a nameless brand pristine day
an exclusive star-sheathed shadow after 
overwhelming luminous glare fainted
a somewhat true-to-life footpath in
a back of structured quaintness

Encountering myself at a passionate spring
oozing its life gliding o'er its rocky...

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Tell her you saw me ...

Tell her I was out on the bluff at the Cape
during a gale, much too close to the rocks.
Tell her the surf was tormenting the ledges,
its roar far too loud...

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