Long Gloam Poems

Translation with commentary of an archetypal Wild West Classic : " Summer Wine "

(I'd wage my bottom diamond dime future generations will re-discover and treasure this true American classic like only a few others of...

Read More

The Song of Amergin: Modern English Translations

The Song of Amergin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am the sea breeze
I am the ocean wave
I am the surf's thunder
I am the stag of the seven tines
I am...

Read More

As dawn unfolds today beyond my fractured windowpane,
a breeze beguiles the ashen drapes. Like snakes they slip aside,
revealing wanton worlds that race and run aground, insane,
immersed in scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and...

Read More

[Note: You will see in the work below connections to other poems I have posted here.  Those poems are tangents to this poem that more completely tell the tale of rise, pride, hubris, fall,...

Read More

“a mute tongue is a slave to silence” - Silent One

You rouse the proud, sung praise all wowed
     Who draws the crowd and plays so loud?
Sway befits a rock star jam
...

Read More

Taking a nap became super busy and hot
What could become of the dream she got?
Keeps coming back to hunting eyes' jot
Viewing afar her possible lot
Maybe or not would be as plot
Or probably weird off frank...

Read More

WELCOME HOME:

CHORUS:
Frozen on a mountain high,
Searching for moment so right. 
How would I have known, baby you nigh.
You coming home, you coming home,
You coming home!
You coming home, you coming home,
You coming home!

Spreading your love wings...

Read More

In all your doings, acknowledge your weakness. 
For all to count, subscribe to His power. 
Forget the current situations' bleakness, 
For favour shall outpour breakthrough's miraculous shower. 

Prayer is the key, 
To open spiritual doors,...

Read More

Influenced by "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "The Rape of the Lock," my goal is to write this completely in iambic meter with (mostly?) rhyming couplets. (Though the intro's meter varies, the main...

Read More

The swings you go through with a child
Are not unlike a coaster wild.
The terror, stark, when they arrive:
“How do I keep this kid alive?”
“What idiot allowed discharge,
And placed with me a care so large?”

When you...

Read More

Beneath the River Somnium,
Abandoned Wishes hymn: quiet in the viaduct:

Reverse the Lodestone;
Reverse the First Sin;
Reverse the Autumn Hearse;
Reverse the Universe.

We are the murk men, intangible ends—inebriated together
With Beelzebub our friend. Absolvent now in burning skin,...

Read More

The window lets in an odd solitary ray of light,
Of timid color, a cusp between twilight and night.
It lands hesitatingly on the golden tip of my pen,
and then blasts into the iris of my eye,...

Read More

(The tale of Jida, the rat who reached for the sky)

In the green land of Ile fair,
Where fruits were heavy and sweet was air,
There lived a rat, both small and spry—
And he did long to...

Read More

Written: September 24, 2023  
Apple Picking Poetry Contest           Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori   
___________________________________________________________

In a farm adorned with autumn's grace,
Where saffron sunbeams...

Read More

Upon the rustic walls,
Laid a shadow, shadow too dry.
In the trees beyond, laid the carnelian of fall;
And I stroll away, into the vestige foliage ply.

In my little cabin,
many boring days had flown by,
but it was...

Read More

How blessed was I to find you twined the foam
          Among the shells and spindrift you called home
        ...

Read More

II. Paralysis U[sic]

Shy one, shy one,
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
Pensively apart;

Linger now with me, thou Beauty,
On the sharp archaic shore.
Surely 'tis a wastrel's duty
And the gods could ask no more.
If thou...

Read More

A Nubian goat they called Split
Was rehabbing her front leg a bit.
She was having a blast,
And the time flew by fast,
But she wasn’t quite ready to quit.

She suddenly realized she’d dozed;
It was later than she...

Read More

                                  ...

Read More

'Tween the shades of gloam and night
roam shadows cold and deep
Cavorting along the garden walls
'neath the eves they do seep

Pulling life from which they touch
removing the essecense of being
Growing bolder and darker still
when clouds course...

Read More

I do not belong to the past, present or future
I am not a constant person you can be with
I travel from time to time with features of nature
I live in the mere pith of changes'...

Read More

I strolled beneath a barren wood,
feeling maligned, misunderstood.
Late night attempts at cloning sheep
bore little else but lack of sleep.

My research grant had been denied,
so I, exhausted, bleary-eyed,
set out on foot to clear the mind,
to leave...

Read More

Lethal kind heart, your fingernails like morganite daggers
sharp enough to stab my heart from the hearth that you warm
As long as you still light it, my breathing bellows will stoke
your flame, which came from a...

Read More

It's been way too long since my last lay
With a blue skirt girl on the westward bay
I couldn't delay my sport and had to pay
For the tinkers under the sun's last ray.

Her hands were crafty...

Read More

I was born through that bloody door
Through my mother’s womb, I saw the gloam 
I was once two, expelled as one
I’m now on the flip side of the portal

Into life, the door closed behind me
I...

Read More