Long Hellish Poems

Prolonged offal bout courtesy constipation... redux revisited

Upteenth instance where yours truly
experienced assault upon hindquarters.

A worse hellish fate than perdition
and the closest in the throes 
of agonizing death scene rendition
stabbing sphincter muscle spasms 
wrench yours truly...

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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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See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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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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Dear Donald John
and GoodFaith Followers,
CoInvestors,
ProActive Prayers for Rapturous Redemption
from Eternal Hellish
paranoid
Left EgoVoices anger and fear
Right SpiritFeelings ecodarkly terrified
from and of dying death.

Your LeftBrain does not lack
for paranoid Win/Lose conviction
We must live in a dog eat...

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“The Remaining”

PROLOGUE:  “Terra Firma and The Bitumen”


"The slow descent into Hell
Had led Her mind to escape to Heaven
Her firmament was Her Mind
Her body just a Shell"


Heaven for Her existed in The Dream
She called Her...

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Sonnets XXV-XXXII

Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

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Sonnets X-XVI


Archaischer Torso Apollos (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

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Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the...

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Doggerel II: Doggerel about Doggerel, or, More Nonsense Verse

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood:
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the...

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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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(Somewhere in late 18th-century Europe a friend, Laetitia, by way of a letter warns her beloved girlfriend, Euphoria--a young, gay and unsuspecting mistress--against the almost inevitable seductions of the infamous and maundering philanderer, Melancholia.).



Dear Euphoria,

...

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He just appeared to me, like wispily curling 
Chimney smoke, 
One grim and early morning in the very midst of 
Decembers briefest days, on the highest slope,
Toiling through my daily round; where, slowly 
Driving up...

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"White Noise and the Mother Load of Dark Matter" 

underneath the static
what exists 
is never seen nor heard

for what it truly is 
the eyes and mind 
retaliate in the deciphering

the invisible return 
each night and...

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That color vileness painted on my face
When coming back my duke to me I saw 
His new squeezing inside much more took place.

He heedful stopped as man hearing to draw;
Because his eye could not reach...

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The Ash Can  ©

I got the call on Sunday night.  I was traveling on business.  When I looked at the caller ID
 I wondered why my husband’s boss would be calling me....

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Silence reigns supreme in my reich

No don (except me)
doth trumpet within the aborted
barren reach of freedoms within expansive realm,
I annexed courtesy manifest destiny,
which peoples now inhabiting said jurisdiction
circumscribed by following coordinates -
Latitude: 40° 16' 22.20"...

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Despite his impatience to show me his hell,
He waited for me in my rest, 
Lying upon the ground, I awoke in prayer,
Thanking God above and asking Him for guidance

“My heart is Yours, always,
From the moment...

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"The Precipice"



In the Autumn 
she wore a wedding veil
A cold winter would lift it
Kiss her lips passionately to 
speak words of 
LOVE
on a 
late roll call

“Well, that’s insanity for you” 
some snakes would hiss
others rapture-faced
on...

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It's hard to think in Either-Or Deductive,
while speaking and acting in Both-And Inductive.

For example,
If my Brother is kind and loving
(and he usually is),
and really not all that judgmental and condemning
with his wife and kids especially...

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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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This is a Crown of Sonnets I wrote about one of my favorite books and movies (the version in 1943 with Liz Taylor, who was only 11 had a small role, Joan Fontaine and Orson...

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#1
"It is a sin to kill a Mockingbird.
While playing games with rocks or guns, defray,
them, please, ...shoot old tin cans.  Each whispered song 
from Mockingbirds, can heal the wounds  of the day"

Virtues are...

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(Spoken) Are you having a bae day?
Are you having it your way?
You don't show any consideration towards me, going astray
I'm going to phade away into the night, since you aren't my sun-shining day
Dismay is what...

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Archaischer Torso Apollos ("Archaic Torso of Apollo")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a...

Read More