Long Hats Poems

When I was a child
Everything was magical
Full of mystery and the unknown
I read hundreds of books
The library my haven
My home
Hours upon hours
Night and day
I read and got lost in text
They supplied me with adventures
Secret journeys
Fun...

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WOMEN ...

Truly amaze me ... they possess the super-human
strength to birth a child - one of the most painful
and demanding physical and emotional feats of end-
urance known to our species - yet they have the
self-confidence...

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"Go on forth young graduates,

And show us who you are

You're now our future leaders

We know you will go far"

And so commencement ended

Pictures done and people changed

Now, off to private parties

All orderly pre-arranged

But four young girls...

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Can you make any sense of
systemic racism?

No more common sense than
too much patriarchalism--
all leftbrain-rightwing dominant things
oppressing sacred Earth's
polycultural win/win systems
promoting resiliently wealthy
resonant synergetic health

Care given
as received
in fruitful wombs,
like apple cores in transition
from refuse
toward rebirth

Maybe an...

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"The Strange Case of F.T."



They say the dead don’t talk
the stories I have calculated
to deliver a saving grace 
confessional shared amongst 
my equal peers, or so I deem 
you somewhat sometimes seem,
less than me, you...

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It's peaceful here in my backyard.
The crows sound happy
with warm October sunlight.

I just read about a deadly gathering in Las Vegas.
Absence of sun-drenched peace.
Inconvenient this time of lost loss.
Death is always inconvenient,
even when invited.

A veteran,
about...

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With my Uyghur poetry translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets who are being sent to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps.

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Asylum seekers, will...

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From ISIS to J HORE totally 
unafraid of the JIHAD domestic 
threat arriving to end my 
life over my American poetry 
accompanying Rasta yago 
waving a 9MM driving a 
Tahoe parked next to her 
dark...

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Here he stands, Edwardian vogue, sometimes with his spats, 
sometimes with his brogues below his dungarees. With rounded collar points and tie, and jacket donned below this flying suit, his waste is tied with simple...

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The three little pigs came to the ball
Tried to blow the castle down
It didn’t work
It was made of solid gold
So they gave up and sat at their trough 
Ate noisily 
And snorted quite a lot

They...

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Perhat Tursun

Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Born and raised in Atush, a city in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Tursun began writing poetry...

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I can’t fear you Ciro Gargano believe me I know the wrath that sent the Fbi to my door to warn me of your victims and how I could save my children by wearing wires...

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I'm sure it was Rob Brezsny, again,
who first pointed out to me
that Western psychoanalysts give priority to pathologies within family relationships,
while Eastern analysts, more embedded in philosophies of interdependence,
begin with what nurturing health dynamics we...

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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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Dedicated to the 2000 National College Football Champions, the Oklahoma Sooners 

--------------------------------------------------------------

Over fifty years, boy and man, I’ve been a Sooners fan
Watched and reveled in their glories, every one;
But there’s no more glorious “Sooner Magic”...

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Written in summer of 1976.


I used to eat my lunch with groups
of businessmen from Campbell Soups.

We drank a drink at lunch each day
Of Coca-Cola mixed with hay

And talked of pending corporate plans
And willow-haired orangutans.

I spent...

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Back in 1962 when I was just a lad
my dad gave me a holiday
the best I ever had.
A holiday of every dream
that one lifetime could hold
so listen while this wondrous time 
to you I now...

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Verse 1: Quiet times…I haunt and taunt for no reason
Fighting times…without any reason, faced with treason
Do you know where I stand?
I have no idea and I fall to my knees
Please, don’t take me back to...

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GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE HEART 


From a two-room schoolhouse high on a hill over the Fundy Bay, I sat at an old wooden desk daydreaming. The ink stains and etchings which were dug deep into...

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During the days before the 
Vacation began FIRST: there
was a thunderous knock on
The door of Damian Hakim's 
Residence. Damian Junior ran
To answer the door.  But
Damian was disturbed in his
den by the omenous knock.
Damian asked...

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Suddenly, two Indian boys throw themselves into the water like meteors
swiming towards camp chatty as prarie dogs,
they hail from a Teton encampment of 74 lodges a few miles up river
most of the men are feeling...

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(A Christmas vacation vignette)

Lisa and I choppered onto Manhattan Island yesterday morning. We’d both felt toasted—so we took naps—and yay! We awoke recharged.

Later that evening, Lisa and I were at the ‘Elsie’ Rooftop Bar, in...

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Science is Fiction

Sir Popper popped the answer to the question of and whether science
holds truth and where and when for how long facts remain value’s 
         ...

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It was a cool, overcast and windy Sunday afternoon in March 2014. We were about 50 miles from Paris, at my Grandmère’s (grandmother’s) farm. She lives in Paris, but she owns a Château and surrounding...

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His full given name is Barack Hussein Obama
The etymology of his first name, "Baraka," a Swahili word meaning "Blessed"


      It's easy to see why he's my favorite POTUS
  ...

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