Long Growing up Poems

(Inspired by my sister, Laura Breidenthal’s poem called “The Dream in His Eyes” and also, inspired by Disturbed’s song “Forsaken”. Special thanks to my sister for such an awesome poem and the writer that wrote...

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The First Valentine Poem

Charles d’Orleans (1394-1465) has been credited with writing the first Valentine poem for his wife in 1415. Charles wrote the first Valentine poem in the first year of his captivity while being...

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I heavily recall two times when I had made you cry,
Both of which bewildered and moved me
My response was that of disbelief, and regret
And never, upon recalling, 
Have I felt more of the need to...

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DT2 came to me, unwillingly and clandestinely,
only because he was referred by his mother,
who was concerned that he was growing up and out
to become an ego-terrorist,
and she had heard of my feminist work as ecotherapist--
so...

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I know I promised
 no more ‘Make you Cry Poems’
I said I'd never write another 
‘Wipe your eye poem’

 And for three years 
I tried not to retract, 
but after so many tears 
I have...

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 TUAN TATA : Song of Uda - I
by T. Wignesan

(Patrick Noone, a British anthropologist, discovered the Ple-Temiar tribe living isolated in the jungle highlands in the State of Perak on the west coast of...

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When I was a child in the streets of Los Angeles you would sized up groups approaching by watching the movements they made.

I remember this group/gang of older kids approaching me, watching them carefully while...

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"Hey, you philosophysing Hindu. Give me a break, Buddy. I was just pulling your leg. [...] I want the rest of the story. Really, I mean it.” Theson said nothing. [...] “I can see you’re...

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Poems about Children II



On Looking into Curious George’s Mirrors
by Michael R. Burch

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon

Maya was made in the image of God;
may the reflections she sees in those curious mirrors
always...

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- - Chapter 2: Adult Responsibility (With Some Breaks) - -     

By ten years old, no weekends off, 
Or Saturday cartoons, 
Although I did have cash to spend, 
I felt my...

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TITLE:
       Xenophobia

Heed the warning
This isn't for the faint of heart
Verbalizing my deepest yearnings 
They're bound to be a bit tart...

Because where I'm from is called the Bible Belt
Where folks...

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Feminist ecotherapists,
deeply immersed in permacultural eco-logic,
a systematic teleology of cooperative nutrition economics,
remain rarely flushed out from their camouflage.

A self-isolating,
often eremitic,
subspecies,
with shamanic nature-as-spirit tendencies,
our most articulate mentors often wander off
to pray for,
breathe and suffer and dance...

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1 - I can't be alone

I struggle to be by myself because my dark thoughts come
But when I'm with people my heart is numb
On top of a lot of pain is what I built my...

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Where do we think all this economic and politically empowering
cooperative
nutritional
organically luscious imagination
and ecologically exegetical orthopraxis
started?

George Lakoff speaks of strictly straight stern paternalistic God the Universalist Fathers,
vertically Winning over an otherwise Loser, yet highly competitive, ecopolitical...

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Final Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

Sleep peacefully—for now your suffering’s over.

Sleep peacefully—immune to all distress,
like pebbles unaware of raging waves.

Sleep peacefully—like fields of fragrant clover
unmoved by any motion of the wind.

Sleep...

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Hello? Are you there today?
Have I scared you away?
Spent my whole teenage life, 
Preparing for this day of strife 
To say my goodbye's
To your love-me-not lies
Oh well, oh well
I'm not saying farewell
Where do you dwell?
In...

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...cont

Breath...
You once said to me,"I'm a man of extremes," and I understood immediately what you meant.  When you drank, you drank hard.  When you worked you expected perfection, in yourself not others, because...

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The Mirror

When I look in the mirror I don’t see me, I see who I used to be.  A little lost girl that was so abused and so misused, so ashamed of who she...

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It only started as a misconception, a misunderstanding
then like grass fed rain, it grew...grew into this
A eulogy, maybe this could be it
about you? For once, this is about me
How can it be...how can it be?
Dreaming,...

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- - - Chapter 1: Early Days - - - 

My father was a rich man, la, *
Though schooled in poverty, (1)  
As such he seldom raised his head, 
Displayed humility.
The center of the...

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The fifth floor was decorated 
With fancy art work. Molly 
Rang the bell. After a few
Minutes an attractive older
Woman answered the door.
She threw the door wide Open 
After she saw them 
with Damian. "Hello Hello...

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I was born to be a survivor and a fighter.
That's why I became a writer.
As a child the physical abuse I endured.
Being a baby it was pretty absurd.

The child of recovering addicts.
Even one that still...

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Act 3. A dark, empty stage.

Marat
(standing up)

My eyes went blank. That's how it goes when
you have been doubly knocked flat on your back
in half an hour. He went, he went,
he went, he went, he went,...

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You are a narcissist and a gas lighter although you claim that you’re not, can’t you see inside, the decay of your soul? The turmoil, all of the rot
 I guess that you can’t because...

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When I was sixteen
I wanted Robert Kennedy's life,
although I didn't know about his time squandered
in staffing McCarthyism's
Make America as Grotesque as Possible campaign,

Which would have given me pause
in that comparatively naive age
of green longing for...

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