Long Hiroshima Poems

State of the Art (III)

These are my "ars poetica" poems: the ones about the art and craft of writing poetry in a modern world that doesn't always recognize the artists or their work. 



Come Down
by...

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Enola Gay

There on the ‘North Field’ tarmac of Tinian Island, Marianas;
Taxis the sleek designed ‘Boeing B-29 Superfortress’ to ready for take-off. 1
Glistening, polished aluminum under the blaring floodlights filmed for posterity,
Maneuvers' the ‘Enola Gay’, chosen...

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Poems about Poems IV

The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak...

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Additional free advice to those* who would be King from the THIRUK-KURAL with Commentary
[*like presidents, prime ministers, dictators of declining (falling or fallen) nations or even empires]

K442: urranOy niikki uraa amai munkaakkum
   ...

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Brains and guts orbit the soul—
that polar star searing in the marrow of being.

I was born somewhere between Einstein’s neurons
Ginsburg beat poetry, the birth of rock and roll, revolution marches,
and the calloused hands of a...

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HIROSHIMA
I remember it well, that first day in Hell
             So long ago, I know

As the sirens sounded our Yankee foe
Decided that now his...

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Lost
for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable...

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Yet Africa is
expected to fall in
line 
With speed and
alacrity 
Or be headed back to
Europe 
For much deserved
censure
And sanitization in
the heart
Of brutish Europe!
Have we not seen
them in action
At Treblinka and
Auschwitz, brother
With their atomic
bombs in Hiroshima
With their...

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“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”



The Dilettante Diaries: Avian Notes on the Sensate Slip Stream : The Silent War in 3 Acts

(Part 2)

What beats...

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In the red desert of the rising sun  
In the surrealness of its silence  
The sky turned grey and ominous  
Amidst the blackened  rain   
As the suns fell into...

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A total Jedi mind f*ck from Hell is what this is. I feel like a nuclear bomb has exploded in 
my mind of Hiroshima proportions and I am on the brink of a Chernobyl meltdown....

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Upon a crowded street in Hiroshima, they met. 
    From distant shores they came, seeking to get 
    Some adventure, some beauty, some wonder, some answers. 
As they wandered...

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FUKUSHIMA, OCEAN EXPOSURE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4eGzS0eYuo

FUKUSHIMA RADIATION IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFPEY-r9QQY





"Abandoned Cities"


Empty sentries standing firm
Vacant windows glistening
they sit with Poe, Van Gough and Edvard Munch all broken
waiting patiently ears open, silent screams, nothing spoken
empty library of learning, all...

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On that day, in Aug 45
Bomber over the city that's very much alive
Nervous crew, cloudy day
Pilots instructions, open bomb bay

The words above as the pilot has said
What happens next the World dreads
The catch releases as...

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On that day in Aug 1945
Bomber over the city that's very much alive
Nervous crew, cloudy day
Pilots instructions, open bomb bay

The words above as the pilot said
What happens next the world dreads
The catch releases as Little...

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Hiroshima – seventy seven years since August 6th, 1945

Given the nuclear weaponry arsenal today
August 6th, 2022, our collective ability
to lay waste major metropolitan areas
would make unleashing atomic warfare
synonymous with the ways and means
to annihilate, decimate,...

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These are poems about shadows, poems about darkness, poems about shades in the form of ghosts and spirits...



Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's...

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Poems about Poets VI

beMused
Michael R Burch

Perhaps at three
you'll come to tea,
to have a cuppa here?

You'll just stop in
to sip dry gin?
I only have a beer.

To name the greats:
Pope, Dryden, mates?
The whole world knows their names.

Discuss...

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Hiroshima Poems 2

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
-Michael R. Burch, "Epitaph for a Child of Hiroshima"



The intense heat and light of the Hiroshima...

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Only foolhardy Homer simpletons
wanna rub this lamp ...

Release the purging power of the hydroGen

All divided brainiac Lisa Simpsons
should be in one camp ...

Keeping a cap on the atomic bottle

It’s madness to proceed any other way
To...

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Hiroshima Poems I

Let Us Be Midwives!
by Hiroshima survivor Sadako Kurihara
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midnight...
the basement of a shattered building...
atomic bomb survivors sniveling in the darkness...
not a single candle between them...
the odor of blood...
the stench...

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Tears would well her eyes, if there were any left.
Pray there’s none as one drop would flood the world. 
One, two, three, four and many more, she lost them all.
There remained is her loin no...

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Flies, drawn to their only sustenance, cloud around my head.
In this cloudless desert sky  - blank, deep-arching cavern of thought  - 
Unblinking  sun stares down but this fire-bird will not fly,
Has no...

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"This is our Cry, This is our Prayer, That there shall be Peace in the World" -
Sadako Sasaki Statue, Hiroshima
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
               ...

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From time to time, people ask me
About my education.
Only then, I remember
I have no degrees or diplomas.
I attended no university either.
I hated textbooks and exams.
I still do.
That's bad education, they say.

But they don't know
I was...

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