Long Heroically Poems

Sappho fragment #155
translation by Michael R. Burch 

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

*

Sappho fragment #156
translation by Michael R. Burch 

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable...

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Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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State of the Art (IV)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...”  — W. ...

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Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems about the earth, climate change, global warming, extinction events, and mankind's role on an endangered world ...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons?
the ones you trim to...

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Mine psyche riddled with dybbuk
Thru emerging adulthood awareness awoke
within noggin of average baby boomer bloke
catastrophization toward risk taking I evoke
positive growth experiences throughout vast
number of orbitz around sun never kickstarted,
nor linkedin with potential livingsocial folk,
thus...

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Mine psyche riddled with dybbuk

Thru emerging adulthood awareness awoke
within noggin of average baby boomer bloke
catastrophization toward risk taking I evoke
positive growth experiences throughout vast
number of orbitz around sun never kickstarted,
nor linkedin with potential livingsocial folk,
thus...

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Power to condemn others, and oneself,
is weaker than power to help others, as oneself.

Power to destroy others, and oneself,
is lesser than power to regenerate others, and oneself, 
interdependently.

Powers of fear and anger management,
with terrifying consequences...

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Mine psyche riddled with dybbuk - haint no joke

Thru emerging adulthood awareness awoke
within noggin of average baby boomer bloke
catastrophization toward risk taking I evoke
positive growth experiences throughout vast
number of orbitz around sun never kickstarted
nor linkedin...

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Finally to Burn: Icarus, Resurrected
by Michael R. Burch

Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand

and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands

where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting

and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting

and all I remember
upon awaking

is: to Love sometimes
is...

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My trees are being rampaged by man's cruelty;
doesn't he feel empathy when they crumble down,
to be shipped on barns and trains for huge profits?
And while my darlings don't bleed like he does, they suffer by...

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When playtime was over my tiny hands tediously picked up Tyco toys, a fistful of three at a time. "Atta girl," my dad would encourage. This daunting task was heroically spared when his master hands...

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Some thrive to be great having never defined what it really means.                       ...

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Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite ...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there
so that all that remains is to

fall?

Only...

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Dear people,
In relation, Historically, 
Historians heroically will fake it. 
kids can serve themselves said correlation. 
Take what is.
Record reels of Real confessions chalk full of truthful lessons on how to feel. 
How to push for...

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There is an antique writing desk
in my little study
handed-me-down
from generations of would-be
writers in my family

And there are ancient creatures
from days gone by
living in this old desk still
evil, larcenous little creatures
envious of literary skill

This explains much

Lately,...

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Stilled again across the canals broadening 
Girth;
Mesh cages of rock-filled Gabions 
Reinforcing patches of exposed and arid earth,
Reflecting the glints that gleefully
Twist and dance in the hot glare of the sun...
Provoking images and stirring indefinable...

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Eccentric Emma, third world charity advocator
Posts smiling foreground photos in mud slewn villages
Personifying inconsistency wafts remote mantra
Mind realm torrents when Followers Like - limitless! 

Travels to India restore her heart's connection
Finds enhanced spirit to spruke...

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He’s the victim of his friends who have all said goodbye, 
they’ve all walked out on him and he doesn’t know why, 
though the innocent who’s suffering he will always try
to act as though heroically...

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Everybody in the building knew
what happened the other day
Everybody in your home office knew too,
your carefully crafted cover was blown
Big news media explosion made it get blown away,
no one now believes a word you say
Years...

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Who is this man laying beside me?
You’re not my lover and I’m not your enemy
Searching and hoping for a familiar touch
Wanting and needing it just a little too much

Where is the man I married prior...

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Incorrigible Recalcitrant - Doppelganger (mine)

Ala Goofus and Gallant 
highlights my diametrically 
divergent alter egos
always the reserved 
obedient docile boy
afeared to stray outside narrow

circumscribed comfort zone
figuratively tethered
extremely short leash
choked me like yoked oxen,
albeit non red dually...

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The Dilettante Diaries: "Open Door Barefoot"



Open door to closed room
Ceiling smashed
Stars in a very clear sky
Fresh air 
taken into lungs
Risen
from 
the 
Lake of None

Arrival of White Doves

Broken glass, careful where you step 
Barefoot Bleeds Love

(Lovejoy-Burton/October...

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ECHOES IN THE STONE

No one can turn back the hands of time
Reliving the war,  TEXAS her independence
The tombs so deep, where real hero's fought and fell
A place so precious, sacred in every hold
A timeless...

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