Long Handful Poems

It's hard to say where and when our town's People of Faith Cooperative started.

After all,
we have all emerged together,
and are still emerging
people of TaoGod,
right?

Our faith includes defining our still humanizing species
as among those not capable...

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Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan 
loose translation/interpretation by...

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English translations of Arabic poems by Fadwa Tuqan aka "The Poet of Palestine"

Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink...

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“le livre bleu” 

Terabytes.
lonely poets, writers, 
musicians and artists play here,
they wear masks that cover
vermillion dripping smiles
over sharp little wolverine teeth,
they drown their sorrows in their muses -
contemporary little monsters – Still Life, 
they call...

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On this day 40 years ago in 1978 my mother, Jacqueline Anne Trestrail, left this world after a relatively short battle with cancer - she was 46. Jimmy Carter was President and Annie Hall won...

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I was a seventeen year old senior in a coed, catholic high school.  Our gym classes however were still all boys and all girls.  My senior year we had gym every other day...

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The Story
by Kamal Nasser
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will tell you a story ...
a story that lived in the dreams of my people,
a story that comes from the world of tents.
It is a story...

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A born lioness my untamed heart? ha! 
a mouse, this pulsing token ruled by unruly wants
at times given, traded or stolen - sometimes
thrown down on a dare to be won or lost 
till it became...

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After Bréagán left the courtyard Erlenkönig began his own preparations for the upcoming fight.  He did not have time to think of the elf's self apprehension.  He knew that because of the chiding...

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This happened last Fall, during Thanksgiving break.

Lisa and I were at the MET (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), with her family, at an exhibit of Art Deco sculpture. Lisa and I came out of a...

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"A dressed day has disrobed into the depth of a drawer's nightstand." 

(Oh, how positively awesome that what can be sorted out in such an explanatory pattern that a difference would maketh a day.)

The muskiness...

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She was in love 
Their expression of it 
Was the perfection of it 
The way they shared 
What they had 
Was beyond compare
Today is the next step
Towards their future
Today they bought a house 
Overwhelmed 
Overjoyed
Her...

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“I do not know if he still lives in that cave or if he is even alive, but I can tell you where it is.  I have never shared this with anyone but Jessica,...

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Dream state yields deep sleep personifications

Upon lying supine - eye shutter lids
into the land of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,
where the sandman beckons and bids
dead to the webbed wide world,
yours truly immune to wakefulness 
despite being...

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act i:
walk down the strip, the neon lights casting a gaudy glow on the fray. i meet my dealer, a facilitator of welcome distraction, and we exchange nods. i take a bump, and the rush...

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From my lowly bachelor’s house
Proudly christened ‘Embassy Fair’
I woke up to the chirping of birds
On the trees above and across the vale
And the riverine bushes in-between
I woke up to the crowing of cocks
And the mooing...

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I was in the shotgun seat
in 1960 Lansing Michigan
headed straight as a harddrive
through ghettoizing "Negra Section"
hunting down our commercial whitebread 
heavenly ThriftyAcres

Wanna be a WalMart ImPlantation
but not Southern enough,
somehow,
to withstand straight-male competition
in fluent White Privileged...

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...the village shivers   a hive of restless souls
skin pricklin' with anticipation
as costumed runners fixin' to gather — hearts a-thrummin'
              ...

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Joulupukki hesitated for a few seconds, 
     “I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but what if we feed the magic corn to a team of deer and they pull...

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The monumental bane of OCD - obsessive compulsive disorder

As origin of Homo Sapien species surged ahead,
harboring nascent predominance
asper said primate reproductively bred,
(albeit via incremental fits and starts)
evolutionary forebears didst dread
Tom Tom Club former members
an American...

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Morning has come, new day is here
Predicaments of all sorts are what lie ahead…
Morning has come, I don’t have fear
Sentiments aren’t manifesting into utter dread…

Morning has come, I have become numb
I lie on the sofa,...

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Through My Son’s Tears in NICU! 
God my creator, You knit me in my mother's womb 
You knew me when I was in my mother's womb 
You had plans for my life 
I was very...

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Adolescent infatuations...never consummated

Greetings reader from a cross between an aging seventy inch long (ringing ding dong) haired pencil necked geek and a Norwegian bachelor farmer wannabe; meaning yours truly actually a virtually married Pennsylvania man,...

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Final Wishes of a Poet 
Arabic poem By: Rukn-al-Din Yunus
Translated into English By: 
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
========================
(Part 1 of 3)

Lend me a handful of earth
So that I may make you a statue 
You have not seen...

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Is to borrow a quote from a hero plagiarism or is it in honor of his memory
Is to but recite the intelligence of a general man forgotten to forever etch it in history
Is it a...

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