Long Hurtling Poems

It’s heading for our planet at ten thousand miles an hour
To stop it all the experts say we haven’t got the power
All the nukes in all the world won’t constitute a plan
So someone said, ‘All...

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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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New Year Poetry

Auld Lange Syne
by Robert Burns
translation by Michael R. Burch 

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And days for which we pine?

For times we shared, my darling,
Days passed,...

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‘ In general, quantum mechanics does not predict a single definite result for an observation. Instead, it predicts a number of  different possible outcomes and tells us how likely each of these is. ‘

...

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Interview with The Most Beautiful Suicide -Evelyn Francis McHale - May 1, 1947

So Evelyn, yours is one of the most famous of suicides, since you chose to jump from the Empire State Building in 1947,...

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She Hasn't Killed me yet
                           58.

   ...

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On a silver moonlit pillow’s blissful patch I dreamt nirvana 
verses for my sister Jay and our magic mutual bond,  that
gem-enhanced treasure chest, that life support as ironclad rampart 
for our twin psyche sparkle,...

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Brackish-gurgling days that
Unobtrusively slid along
Past tussock grass and curled up 
Balls of Fern...
Glued tightly onto structured vanes
Of outstretched frond.
Venerable Mosses reciting epic tales,
Measured throughout Metronomical 
Strains,
Chanting methodically in harmonious
Downturn - 
Wherein contained: 
Foreboding dialects delivered...

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He was there in the beginning
and through the eternal ending.

He'd scattered his seed 'cross numerous worlds.
They flourished.
They perished.
Flora, fauna, innumerable forms,
aeons of evolutionary warfare.
Extermination of the unfit
without the mercy of design.
Quadrillions of cadavers
paving a road...

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Showering white light illuminates 
  Bright-Moon Bay;
   In the overlooking Moon-Inviting Pavilion,
 Li Bai had raised his twinkling, rich amber
Coloured wineglass
    To invite the same reticent Moon.  ...

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Just as well I was driving at a moderate speed.
Having resumed control I spied Lelia sticking her tongue out at those reckless varmints.
She stopped the minute I noticed.
Odd.
“Children …….sometimes you have to act like a...

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*To fully appreciate this a person would have to be at least somewhat familiar with the movie: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

"Dude, here's a heads up - ENTROPY BITES!" said Bill as he limped up...

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strife riven island corner, rough hewn by rival visitation
  vexed, looking in, looking out, on the edge of places to go
  thrang in thrall of other realms, banners furling, batons flung
  across...

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ZEN DEATH HAIKU XI

These are my modern English translations of Japanese Zen Death Haiku. 

Above the garden
the camellia tree blossoms
whitely...
—Uejima Onitsura, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Moonlit hailstones: 
the night hawks return.
—Uejima Onitsura, loose translation...

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Himalayan  Trip-Trap

They poured in,  before the deluge
To surpass the natives in numbers
folks in their  cribs -through-hearse  stages, 
trusting like kids,  a burnished sky,  blue-white, 
a cocktail of the wrong...

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Sebastian 
Writer of romance
Oh how the women swoon
Opening wide to their lovers
Children named in his honor
Strong men beg for but a few of his words
They wish to be carried to bliss in their lovers arms

The...

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This is a poem about the University city of Cambridge in the UK , although I have only been there a few times , I decided to write a poem about it. Lord Bryon one...

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Man, seldom a straightforward animal, 
Long lost in the deserts of weariness,
Wants to flee from a life of denial, 
Wallows no less still in piles of warm ash,
 
And feeling hurt, he nurses hidden strife,...

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Tribute to the Rains 

And then it finally came
What was very much sought
And what was most needed 
As people even prayed for

Eventually, the rains did arrive
Coming as it did in a flurry
Consuming with it all...

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Quail not at Death’s door if you wrought no wilful harm

Quail not at Death’s door if you wrought no wilful harm
Should turning back in vengeance be the Dead Man’s qualm
Though even as the end nears...

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It is a dazzling display of brilliance, this conglomeration of constellations from different skies above as many different seas.  I look at them, and feel the spark within my being.  So, like a...

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Diminishing virtues stripped away
From the flesh
By the fierce brined rods that freely 
Course thy hot crimson blood; 
Dry cracked lips attempting to
Fashion broken words of compliance
That so must needs to be spoken...
But...Ohhh, Meretrix...
My foolish and...

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Deep breath
Then a shallow one
What's that now?
Another shallow one?
And another
OK, there is a deep one now
And now a shallow

And there is no rhythm to it
There is no fixed interval
The breathing is like a ship in...

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Alan Shepard, astronaut, took golf balls to the moon
He whacked them only when he knew that he’d be leaving soon
‘One flew two hundred yards,’ he said, ‘and as I recollect
one came down in a crater,...

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OUT FROM THE HEAVENS 

Came this dazzling beautiful Gem, hurtling towards me
tail aglow, streaking across the darkened sky,
bearing an energy that lit up all I could ever want to see.
Her radiance so pure, this I...

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