Long Haranguing Poems

Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable...

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Mahmoud Darwish English Translations of Arabic Poems



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of bread warming at dawn,
a woman haranguing men,
the poetry of Aeschylus,
love's...

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Dopo lunghe vicende della vita
Mi ritrovai seduto su un divano       
Con un telecomando fra le dita.
When my life struggles were to their end
I found myself sitting on a sofa
Holding...

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Ah... the glory of a restful sleep

Nothing beats the refreshing
blissful peaceful easy feeling
resulting from shut-eye after
feeling zonked out staying up
late after a hard day's night
binge reading or slaving o'er
crafting an umpteenth brilliant
masterpiece a comment from
modest...

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Pariah heap - savagely subjecting myself to humiliation

Outward slovenly appearance bespeaks volumes
wordsworth their weight in gold
(exhumed from the pith
of these lovely bones -
beclothed with mottled skin)
presages afterlife of hellish horror
(think Dante's inferno),
nevertheless a respite from...

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Deva Ossig, the landlady (and property owner) turned rogue

Just a couple weeks shy 
and seven years ago to the day,
I still remember contractual obligations
our previous residential abode
724 West Railroad Avenue, 
Bryn Mawr 19010 zip code
volatile...

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When I was little, my stepfather and I would be outside, coloring the driveway with chalk or throwing a frisbee and he’d stop and say, “I’m gonna go stir your mama up.”

He’d go in the...

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I awkwardly, ineptly, and submissively fumbled thru life...,
whereat purposefulness rarely gained traction

Fatherhood (half my life time ago)
bolstered reasonable rhyme
manifesting itself before
these myopic bespectacled eyes.

Infancy, babyhood, and Childhood
evidenced, noticed, and witnessed
adequate basic provisions,
and no shortage of...

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back a small number of years thee diva of this domicile
exhibited an aura, charisma, enigma…devoid of any guile
boot of late turned a cold shoulder to me and I’ll
avoid denigrating, haranguing, and lambasting said dell lisle
la,...

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WEATHER FORECAST 2018

Good evening ladies and gentlemen!  This is your friendly meteorologist at local station lucky 13 on the dial with the upcoming forecast for 2018.

On the horizon, we have a grizzly cold front...

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“Slips the Blue Satine”



Desire bites 
a sonnet ripped 
where the voice projects
through glossy cherry bit lips
down a telephone line
wrapped around long legs

speaking soft words
welcoming you in like a quilled whip

Freedom bites
a too serious sonnet smiles
then...

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I stand where the sunset hugely spills    
Out upon subdued but still hotly
Glowering plains...                  ...

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Dotard Trumpery used to disgust the "ery" excrescence ending his surname,
for apocope he approached Megan Trump and poached her maiden name,
to which Joshua Trump, her son naming after her, dare no longer lay claim, ...

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Though few of us "sigh like furnace 
with ballads made our mistress's eyebrow" 
these days . . . 
a poem is still as good as a bunch of flowers 
when it comes to expressing our...

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Somewhere between here,

blase and tomorrow's

derangement, lost the plot in

a moment of coherent clarity,

'twas quite a peculiar notion

unsettling predicament of

knowing one's own psyche,

silently questioned the

absolute mindfulness,

hardly sure whether to

heed or trust abstruse

insomuch as the validity

mid concise...

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I don’t remember the shower
unless the glass shatters
into smithereens
I slip on the soap
of sudsy shards
Life is hard
the walls press in
white and smooth
as if a crowd’s haranguing me
Life is hard
with choices of a cloth
or bar to...

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feared and fearless in his prime,
   cracking, crumbling in due time.

     accusing, haranguing, his voice 
     could shake the most cavernous hall,
   ...

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