Long Hollers Poems

T'were the night after Christmas, 'n' the house was all dark.
Not much money for 'lectric in the ol' trailer park.
Ma waitin' tables at the club on the base,
jist me and my sisters alone in the...

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Dave the host gives his TV audience his best gigantic I-am-Dave Smile.  “Today’s topic is guns.  Do you love them? Do you have them? Do we need more?  Do we absolutely love...

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I live in a place striving for sobriety surrounded in alcohol looking for happiness trapped among our very own sadness. I hear my people’s laughs and I hear my people’s cries, but most of all...

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Cooper was a large and curious tiger, the bright star of a motley circus,
Always out of step with others; like erring moon, of dawn skies, citrus.

He was well fed and got lots of attention, like...

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I present unto you 
Unsub one and unsub two
Each looks as I do 
They think like me too
Unsub one will have some fun
Killing everyone that survived
Unsub two will handle the cops and news
As soon as...

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The Bachelor Spectacular
by Michael R. Burch

One heart? Tossed aside.
The other? A bride’s.
In all his great wisdom, the bachelor decides.

Eeenie, mean-ie, mine-y, mo’,
one gal must stay and one must go.
If she hollers? That’s the show!

No heart...

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Sitting on a rusted blue bench the sun blew down on me a cool 
     green and yellow as the afternoon tucked me into 
     bed, ...

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A profession that's not the norm.
It borders on the absurd.
In the mountains and down the hollers,
powerful engines could be heard.

I decided to try something new.
Put my driving skills to the test.
Driving from Harlan County to...

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In 2015…
           —In DMs, he wondered whether Trump “Is America’s Hitler”
 
In 2016…
—“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. 
...

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A martyr poltergeist left an elegy
Not much eulogizing the choice of a strategy.
Its undead friends never met their ends, they cannot be
The least affected by all this atrocity.

A cry of help was muffled
In the ruins...

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He knows he acts like a dumbass
sometimes
An overzealous hopeless romantic
But this is a little much
Even for him
Luckily, he's got a partner in crime
this time

"You're totally gonna marry her, arentcha!?"
Yells Boomer, his Boston accent thick
punching the...

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He scorns all these young potheads and their habits.
He vows he’d never do a thing like that.
He pours himself a glass of amber liquid,
Locates his keys and dons his tattered hat.

He drives down the street...

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The Playbill for the 9/8/01 show at Godspeed Opera House falls from my  palm to the floor. Here I sit, with a drugged hangover but alive. The last thing I remember is a suicide...

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HANDS UP

If you're involved a witness of a bank or store robbery
The man/men with guns in their hands
What do they say to you

Hands up
Git o'ver there
Sometimes may even say git on the floor
Surrender your freedom
For...

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Scene beneath is utterly true
   Veracious (ridiculous) account
   Told by me from baby eye view,  
    - Utterances she was without 


Eighth day in the cold bright...

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Flim-Flam dances to the beat of a drugged out drummer
Her moves are suggestive and sometimes vulgar
Her hands are soiled and damp holding onto the grimy pole
She’s topless and her dancing is like a listless puppet...

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Here is a short list of life's many stories. If we take the time and slow down and notice, there are stories going on around us all the time. Stories of life, death, happiness, anger,...

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Briar and the Dragonfly


Seated in a saddle on a dragonfly in flight
Shimmering upon the evening skies
Iridescent flickerings beneath this moonlit night
Magical this scene before my eyes

Smiling like a crescent with a firefly in tow
Laughing as...

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At the core exists his emptiness
Spineless unrest smothers him
All due to nature’s wavering obscurity
And stumped awareness of inherent security

Fear took charge and penetrated his inner skin
Seeped into his veins 
Then settled in marrow
And so his...

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Cobalt beams the remnants of a building in a nuclear Holocaust 
Chanting screams gyrating from the air bouncing off the trees 
Babies alive surrounded by dead grown ups lying on their backs facing the skies...

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His seared look, from a painted gird brow dons,
a face like Van Gogh with both ears, though just,
as lost, looks about an empty room of challenges,
that is built high on lost convictions, drowns in a,
festering...

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All has come to an end, except for who to proclaim
The winner of The National College Football Championship Game

Excitement is brewing for the play-off game
Some will be at the game watching getting rained on, cold,...

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A cold lion roams, doctrinaire and sterile,
The expanse of Africa offers him no sanctuary, the Saringehti no salvation,
He can only smell the scent of his pride now, his cubs shun him,
Repelled by needless roars, the...

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We sing the song today withal our pride
For the nation who gave us our life,
Let us forgive for a day all enmities
And solely beclam their souls 
Who bled freedom for us to live and peacfully...

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The inspiration for today’s poem…I found beneath my feet…
as I began my walk this morning…in a guitar stain on the street.

Last night we attended a concert at a friends house…where we sat off in the...

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