Long Houses Poems

The night Before Christmas Eve
By Franklin Price
12/17/2016


Prologue

The Night Before Christmas
A most famous of  poems
Read  to children aloud
By their parents in homes

To children who gather
'Round the brightly lit tree
To hear Santa is coming
Presents for...

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Poem revised Memorial Day May 30th, 2022 at 1500 hours

Flagrante delict adulterous sordid behavior 
automatically linkedin with Lothario;
an unscrupulous seducer of women, 
based upon a character 
in The Impertinent Curious Man, 
a story within a...

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“Son”...”say goodnight to grandpa”

Spurred by mother dearest 
as well as other politesse
drummed into her second born
fobbing blandishments as incentive
tumbled off fingers of prodigal son
tripped wordsmith to splutter forth
forthwith the following lines.

Back in the day 
quaint...

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Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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As winter hazes of January spraying
While I was meditating on how
To write this riveting poem which
Seemed to be for someone who
I never cast in my sight.
Despite her name is not an odd in me
But I...

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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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Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!



Eternal Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm...

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I cannot let this obsession with Coronavirus (COVID19) go
It is apparent, from the number of deaths projected, to be in the hundreds of thousands, that many Americans still are not heeding the warnings. I hope...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems V - Ber Horvitz, Yitzkhak Viner, Franta Bass

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes....

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Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have never been accepted for publication. Here are a...

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How dare you desecrate the Capitol with urine and feces!
Even filthy pigs refuse to defecate near their own dwelling place.
How dare you flaunt confederate flags, grim reminders of our bloody history, 
Alongside swastikas, hate symbols...

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Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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The soul of the earth is wrapped up inside
And the spirit of God is walking beside me
The universe rests upon my shoulder
And I can feel its power moving all over
embracing the soul of man
And causing...

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“Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - IV - Primo Levi

Shema
by Primo Levi
translation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable houses, 
who return each evening to find
warm food, 
welcoming faces...

consider whether this...

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The excitement mounted as we rummaged around in the attic looking through old steamer trunks for discarded clothes and props to make Halloween costumes. With an old suit and hat of Granddads, I became a...

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BEING AN INFORMANT UNDERCOVER DOPE FIEND HAD A FEW PERKS ESPECIALLY FOR MY ABUSIVE EX HUSBAND HE DID ODD JOBS FOR CIRO AND HIS PARTNER LARRY MOVING VIDEO MACHINES FENCING WEAPONS CIRO HAD STORED IN...

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The Alaskan Oil Pipeline

Nineteen sixty-eight confirmed the year
Of discovery by ‘Humble Oil’
To North America’s largest oil field,
On the North Slope of the Brooks Range;
A west to east Northern Alaskan mountain chain.
An area forty miles wide...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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“I thought about the former days, the years of long ago.” * 

If you saw something beautiful in a people, a place, a thing;
If you heard about something captivating and fantastic;
If you felt something soothing...

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I got up this morning in a good mood 
searching for solitude in the distant skies
And watching the clouds rolling by
I stopped and listened to the sounds around me
While contemplating my sacred destiny
Barking dogs and...

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“There,” Lumi said suddenly and Joulupukki looked through the trees, seeing a small house. 
     “Wait here said Joulupukki, I'll be right back.”
He made his way to the house and called...

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One small little country which houses 
one of the highest paid governments 
in this modern world joke ran upside down

A big part of our life existing reality 
when the backbone is gone snakes appear with...

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The tears well up, and scarce could she not moan
When father, brother, husband, all have died.
She now has no possessions, neither home,
But travels to a distant, unknown land:
Once so secure, yet now compelled to roam;
Once...

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Everything here is true
Just as stated
because it's already happened
or - it has yet to occur - 
but it's very soon to occur
and I have such strong feeling
that the future will be as I see it
as...

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