Long Gowned Poems

the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no...

Read More

Channelling a King 

(A regal voice whispers)

Oh Here
She Comes

Oh Here
She Comes

Oh Blessed Be
Oh Blessed be

Tonight the Goddess of Fertility and Motherhood

Appears on her white charger

To enchant and tempt all
Who wishes to follow her

To her Faeryland

Ashera
The...

Read More

The following is a tribute to all Native Americans. Please check the footnotes for
unfamiliar words.

A lonely man riding a tashunke
Toward the anapo
Where the yellow-gowned prince
Rises majestically
With an army of golden spears
Aimed at desert’s sandy heart
The...

Read More

Life flashes by in a moment of time.
Late twilight’s rose fades, the sweet songbirds leave.
Though we strive to remain in reasoned rhyme
All living will die, the joyful will grieve.
What vision can guide us? What blinding...

Read More

Dark matter seems to be
What isn’t there to be seen
In between
What we see.

They dub it dark since you cannot detect it
Nor can they inspect it
With telescopy.

Yet, while it can’t be descried
It cannot be denied
For equations...

Read More

I appreciate knowing nothing
    trying to let the weight of the world
 rest
somewhere out of sight
    viewable only through a glass tube
  or a scientific device operated with...

Read More

I greet you, oh mighty Sun!
You who warm us everyone
You who glow to make things grow
You who melt all ice and snow
You are a most mighty one
For you rule the sky, oh Sun
But my Lover...

Read More

Rosebuds draft in scarlet, crimson, or maroon,
dreams to capture the viewer's point of view,
as its blossom's sheath their basis to its prune,
magnificent achievers rise in rows queue,
as the loss of age cast their field of...

Read More

In the setting sun the Sioux Tepees look like vandalized pyramids,
the Tetons themselves appear as though angels raped
by the savagery of centuries yet noble in barbaric beauty and warrior ethos,
a Scalp Dance is begun, torches...

Read More

Disparage not our hearts-- they are God-loved, God-found
This will get mystical -- allow me to propound
Just think-- wherever we pray can be holy ground

Contemplation of His Love always will astound
The Divine Physician can heal us...

Read More

By Cherbo Geeplay

You woke me up when I was dead,
teaching the night stars wantonly 
to obey the Atlantic; then slashed
my arteries in flight to Lake Piso, 
humbling its boundaries, before 
fusing them calmly to a...

Read More

In the boxed gilded frame exists the residue of
A painter’s vision, of his nightmare placed upon
Canvas.
Locked within the cells of four square,
Lies a view into the ethereal world beyond our
Conscious mind.
A heckling demon does laugh,...

Read More

Neither puppy love nor lust, each insists
in its imperfect play. Their hearts resist
both by clinging in its barbaric way.
Youth forgiven. The wolf begs her to stay. 
But a commitment is made in marriage. 
It is...

Read More

The Highland Princess
Sails again
Its captain and dove
To the Mediterranean
 
Now so much in love
To an island they go
To celebrate their engagement
For their love truly flows
 
This archipelago of seven
In this sea of blue
Aboard our babe
As...

Read More

*Image of Horse Carousel by Pixabay.

Paradise Holds A Horse's Crown

~o~          ~o~          ~o~

Tis naught mere magic to be...

Read More

it was the night before Christmas. and all in my house. Everyone was sleeping 
even my pet mouse. The year before I was bad all year. I did not 
want much hardly nothing at all...

Read More

Does anyone care about souls choked by the hands of poverty,
future shattered against the stones of repression, 
as we are awaken to the alarms of war guns
A daily rhythm of fear to which we dance...

Read More

I remember yesterday, 
You became human through breakfast and poem
As if desired to be a transfused memory
Next to where I discarded you,  

Unnoticed, a incomplete short story, 
Some lack of narrative.

I remember the nurse,...

Read More

After the party, I woke up on a tropical island
My vision wasn’t so clear and so my mind
I’ve heard a new music, I couldn’t understand
All I knew, everything was no longer aligned.

With tattered clothes and...

Read More

The perpendicular motions of a cuckoo clock can be quite exact. Such wisdom in the tick of a hand. Beautiful is the calling cards of an erratically placed dish of seafood. On a pretty tablecloth...

Read More

               Azura de'palls the grid, 
surveyor on placebo crystal pillar lampstand, 
mid eyeing treeline,
at curmudgeon sky.
Angels filter embrionic ether sift of...

Read More

[This poem first appeared in the anthology, "The Soul and the Singer," Young Publications, c. 1968.  It was reprinted in my first poetry chapbook "The Lady in the Pink Hat," Candor Press, 1969.]

God rises...

Read More

There is a name falls on my ear,
Like an aria, so soft and clear.
It rings with a melodious sound
With vision of maiden quaintly gowned.

I never saw my Grandma Hannah.
She lived far away in Indiana.
I knew...

Read More

Inside a bamboo garden, where I followed a red-crowned crane 
an exotic treasure of another sort held me spellbound 
seated upon the lawn, a courtesan beauty there did reign. 

Guilty, I stood beside a Lychee...

Read More

Mankind, I fear is losing
Its leaders, know not shame
They cast aside the helpless
The hopeless and the maimed
Their lawyers speak to justify
Their evil, soulless deeds
The lowly, all but crucified
Unheard, their childrens needs

Beaten, bruised and broken
We’ve thread...

Read More