Long Hiss Poems

"The Messenger"

Love is rich with 
venom and honey. 

there was a female ...

snake, 
it watched 
with green-eyed 
avarice, covetting
a dove’s nest

the dove, 
was white as snow, 
not young, getting on,
tiny flecks of grey

the dove 
alone,...

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Poems about Poems VI

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 Muse
with reprimands of Dr. Seuss.

The...

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Poems about Poems (I)



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer
~~~underwater~~~
watching the shoreline blur
sees through his breath’s weightless bubbles...
Both worlds grow obscure.



Muse/Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

“What will you conceive in...

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No Mark
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes, 
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before...

here where you have...

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The State of the Art (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has...

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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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These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems ...



The Vision of the Overseer’s Right Hand
by Michael R. Burch

“Dust to dust ...”

I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color...

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alarm goes off*
I sit straight up startled and scared
Just my alarm, I hit the button
Get up and go to the bathroom
I brush my teeth with my toothbrush
Scratchy, painful bristles
Toothpaste that makes me sick
With the strong...

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Geese, Goslings and the Bridge

Sometimes, when you least expect it, Mother Nature makes a u-turn and draws you into the ridiculous.  Such was the time recently as I was returning from a friend’s home...

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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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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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Evolution Not God

It is the case that there is no God,
He does not exist, he is not the one,
He is not there, he’s not everyone’s invisible puppet,
It is not personal, he is not the Son.

Evolution...

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If you would like to have your limerick(s) posted, soup mail them to me.

Ms. Rude is still writing her snide remarks
She sounds like a mad dog who barks and barks
Geeze, lady, give it a rest
Your...

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Three cousins played a “game’ of war
A map of Europe spread across the floor
No adults there to keep the score
As each of them wanted more and more

Three of four empires lay upon that map
As they...

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Font Din Black

so u real??? 
Warning! The following choppy, batty, 
dopey: elegy = flaky, goofy, history: iffy, 
jumpy, kooky: loopy, matty, nappy, nippy, 
sketchy material prone to find the reader 
dazed and bewildered, yet comfortably...

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The Bedouins, bequeathed with the sacred beauty of paradise harsh,
trusted guardians of jealous gorges and gifted groves
lead me from the Wadi Musa to the humble ingress of Petra,
saying with thrill, the Jin of your Jihad...

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“Barking Up the Wrong Tree” 

ghost gums
shed their bark 
the min-min 
makes good use of it
papyrus, soft enough to 
imprint and write
thoughts, like the 
ripening welts of 
green ants 
small bites sting
subcutaneous and 
meridional, 
terra...

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Tasting Africa (One L****ick at a Time) Part 2
(Though the title's a joke, my limericks are not!)

5. Yet Another World Wonder
Feel like now I am older I need to admit
A Safari to Africa costs quite...

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So I have some things, that I just have to say,
but please do not take me in the wrong way,
I have this tiny little problem, inside me you see,
and its called trying to live with...

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Yesterday,

I went home for lunch,

I never go home for lunch.

When I got to our apartment 
I don't know why but I didn't reach for my key. 

Francine was at work and I always leave last in the...

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Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and...

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From blank screen to logorrhea, I write with confused adumbrations

Methinks hmm, perhaps
I admittedly self plagiarize and quite aware
aforementioned amalgamated, conglomerated, 
fabricated, jerry rigged, and organized 
eye gripping titled
poem already aired a year plus ago,
though revisiting...

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All on a sudden getting awake in the morning, I got stunned seeing, the whole earth had become a great graveyard. Each house was, as it were, a grave. In that grave, all were whispering...

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      In the purple shadows of the black's monoliths, where an ancient echo calls forth, at the blurry forge of "Ralkon Dis",
a salient dragon from mystery's petra cliffs drifts you...

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Ghostly spirits from deadly arsenal spell haunting annihilation

With mighty mouse and Hercules height 
tried to retrieve sanity spread loose;
a faded unpleasant memory - even enlisting
decades old cartoon characters: 
Natasha squirrel and Bullwinkle moose
flow of electrons...

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