Long Heaps Poems

"The Book of Changes"

Thoughts arrived before words,
1000s of years before
the crossing of curves

always seen to be 
swimming upstream 
against the current

thoughts … and feelings,
in the flow, always arrive 
before words, they are cast 

in the...

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Here and Hereafter
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.



Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.

Because death...

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Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
carefully in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains...

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers IV



Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is your concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm...

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Next day new school day. 
Amadeus was the first to
Wake then he woke DJ and 
Damali And all three went for
The showers. Twenty minutes 
Later they woke everybody else 
Including the adults. The Hakim 
Children...

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Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp...

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Sonnets XVII-XXIV

Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten...

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MODERN SONNETS I

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.


Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem...

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Poems about Children V

Pan
by Michael R. Burch

Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves

Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles

where we cannot return,...

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Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

Quiescent unions...

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Once Upon a Time Everything was Perfect in Eden, NSW, Australia

This is a story about why snakes are reluctant to leave whenever you see them. 
Why they hang about, instead of scurrying off.
A reluctant snake...

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Now as the years passed by everyone became so tired
the heaps of things scattered around became too much to bear
some benevolence was certainly grand but this was too much
the two felt unable to undertake ...

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WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

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By definition, Mr. Contradiction asserts the contrary or deny the truth of something. He admittedly is hypocritical and controversial, and most often, he refuses to surrender. He fights until only death or doom defeats him....

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Swept up into piles; everywhere 
Abouts; in collected heaps all 
Around.               
It is almost as if the drab 
Streets were strewn...

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The long uncharacteristic meandering river                              ...

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The Wedding Ceremony of the Dead, Part One, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s Les Noces de la Mort by T. Wignesan

Orgy of stone !
I drank hate in your inferior parts
And bathed during a wild summer our...

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Me real name it is Bill Vonbertouche,	
but for short most folk just call me Bill.
Me Mum and Dad say I’m real smart,	
but the girls reckon I’m just a dill.	

But let’s just get this one thing...

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This is my modern English translation of Paul Valéry's poem “Le cimetière marin” (“The graveyard by the sea”). Valéry was buried in the seaside cemetery evoked in his best-known poem. From the vantage of the...

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Earth dwelling mongeese are neither toys nor coins and pedalling backwards then forward is not considered the primary way of jet propulsion off a very high hill. So one two ping means fried rice coming?...

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An old farmer, his wife and little daughter,  had dinner in their farm house before going to sleep,

A gang of four thieves, showed up on the farm in a dirty, old truck,  to...

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My sweet mother of pearl struck a ruby eyed reef. 
Then quickly sank into the deep, just shy of the cay of life. 
Don't remember much about her,
Daddy never had much to say... about the...

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11	Contracted in this state our marriage made
		And only far too late we recognize
		That gladly with Reptilian Flesh we’ve laid
		The veil torn away revealing eyes
		Of yellow flame exposéd we surmise
		Out from the darkened room these floating...

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I'm determined to get better 
Intent on improving 
If you saw where I was
You would shriek and gasp what are you doing 
At 7 countries counseling clinic
This process 
I'm ready to begin it
Cause the longer...

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"Aliens!" I shouted above the roar of the blaze.

Please rescue us from this godforsaken place
veritable hellscape, where angels fear ingress.

Just then an unexpected pleasant distraction
woke me from induced stupor linkedin to Los
Angeles fires jump/kick starting...

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