Long Harmonies Poems

Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common...

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It had been a hellish week.

On Monday
my lonely and tired AfricanAmerican husband
told me, as gently as possible,
that what I had hoped was a temporary separation
is to be extended into perpetuity.

This separation had been scheduled to...

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I was skeptically listening 
to a retiring social researcher,
and problem-solving imaginer,
from the American Enterprise Institute;

An Institute
I usually find more destitute
of bicameral consciousness than not,
and thereby with less healthy resonant imagination
than more pathological dissonance.

But, I found...

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I listened to his heart profusely, 
For a beat like his was much to ponder
I often wondered, his thoughts, and,
A light in me knew, with wretched wonderment
What the whispers in his mutterings meant to me

They...

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I'd like to apply for a permit
for a protest march
on the Washington Mall.

Lovely idea.
But, we're only issuing Mall permits
for Song and Dance Events.

I think this might be a violation of my Rights
to Free Speech.

I see...

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Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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Imagine we live in an eco-normative story
of competing for wealth-commodities,
cash piled in quantifiable currencies,
collectively blinded to our Win-Win
natural economic,
ecological,
psychological,
biological health and well-being 
nurturing value roots.

One day, our PolyCultural Received View
unveils a co-operatively synergetic evolution 
of...

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Math speaks through us
within us
of cognitive landscapes
imagined still and/or moving.

Primal metrics are rational and symmetrical,
good as true as straightforward,
complex creation story problems
unfolding with precise answers,
right as at least not not ecologically wrong,
ecopolitically suboptimal perhaps,
yet at...

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Various Heresies 6

Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield...

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A society
culture
religion
humane species
forgetting,
or more likely under-valuing,
how to unitedly suffer loss
may never have learned to face our universal fear 
of dissociative ego-death
as a badge of Earth-systemic re-cognition,
dignity through suffering 
sacred Ego's over-capitalized absence
where once we knew...

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Could we be doing our best
to invest in Earth's cooperative health markets?
While you sell our most competitive killing machines
to our Saudi Arabian cousins.

Referencing this touchstone as an ecopolitical WinWin,
unlike Parisian multicultural investments in climate health,
as...

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My early 20s Eldest Black Lives Matter Son
wears his disabling ADHD label uncomfortably,
impatiently,
like a possibly self-redeeming crown
but with unfortunate MessiahComplex thorns
as the Great WhiteMan's sacrificial lamb.

His First, and hopefully last, Girl
is an ADHD Latina,
with sparkling...

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Fascism lives in tension with holy optimism,
as hatred fades in presence of mutual love,
as WinLose evolutionary models
give way to WinWin sacred Energy
stories and songs and dances,
as patriarchal colonization
gives way to matriarchal creolization.

Fascism,
synonymous with Totalitarianism,
as written...

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The great Sabbath day descended, though not in my heart and mind
On this new day,
I imagined rays of God’s light shining generously upon the mountains,
Pools of living waters gurgling, and winds gently rustling trees
Wishing for...

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You mentioned you work with a therapist.  

Has she encouraged you to incorporate centering exercises
and holistic thinking and feeling experiences
healing interior and exterior nondualistic climate events
in your everyday thinking/feeling mutually non-violent practice?

Has she encouraged...

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Ours was daily mysterious,
sometimes near mystical, 
rapture;
a sensual yet platonic
dorm-mate love affair,
within the only male grad student corridor
at SFSU.

He was the presumably straight Vietnam veteran
southern white good ol' boy,
athletically studying Japanese,
with a gentle passion for...

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PSYCHOTIC JOURNEY
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS


Feeling really beat,  I went to bed early last night
Suddenly awakened feeling something’s not right
There was total darkness, I was not in my room
Lying on a cold flooring, with a feeling...

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My dreams were of the dire Queen
I had allowed her reign over me, callousing my heart,
She was inside me, laughing
Having crawled in
My walls closing, as she filled my soul
We were one, yes for a time,...

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HungSau
always do your best to reveal
only what is already known pleasure
and passionately loved

Nature’s kindness 
and spirit-restoring justice,
trusted truth as peaceful beauty,
loving abundantly rich healthy life
and sufficient death.

But,
what do we love about death?
Should I not know...

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I believe it was Buckminster Fuller
who first posited
a prime appositional,
like Yang and Yin,
but his was:
Energy is to physical nature
as Information is to metaphysically languaged systems.

And,
if we were to add the Yin and Yang
of this positivist-regenerative...

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They say society's heart
is changed by story
and not by theory.

But what is history
if not also a theory about evidence
for healthy and pathological stories?
Experiences,
narratives,
parables,
analogies,
ecologies,
theologies
with active Yang EgoSubjects
and yin Eco Understories
favoring healthy WinWin ego/ecological theory

Entering the last...

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They say the one you think of last before sleep,
Is the one you care for the most— the one you wish to hold, admire, love…

The two of us…beings of bravery,
Had labored all the night, 
In...

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ZeroSum Spirit
bicameral begins
playing through Ego-Eco Me.

Nondual trinitarian bilaterality
of a Mother Scaling Tree
forecasting and shadowing
WinWin
healthy branching
and rooting properties.

Spirit consciousness,
DNA with RNA tribal strings
of multicolored cooperative intelligence.

ZeroSpirit
fractal-seasoned
developing psychology
phylogeny
homology
toward
WiseElder WinWin GoldenRulology.

ZeroAnimated
AcclimatingMundi,
full-mooned Boody
multiregenerational cosmos
where ev'rything grows living out
and fades...

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“On the Sonnet”
by John Keats

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fettered, in spite of painéd loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To...

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I know nothing brighter than disdain
for algebra’s insane fascination with irrational outcomes,
dissonating my natural empathy
with harmonic blends and rhythms,
patterns of fore-giving symmetry
and holonic wholy closure.

By contrast,
the only polymath I take to,
warm wet eco-polity compost
transforming into...

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