Long Husks Poems

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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Poems about Things that Break II
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter.
 
 
 
Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch
 
You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VII

These are early poems I wrote as a boy and as a teenager.

The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men...

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As I ascend the podium, a predator of piquant pontifications, my eyes ravage the assemblage of adversaries, their countenances a canvas of consternation and morbid fascination. The atmosphere is heavy with the miasma of malignant...

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Good new,good news He said to me
'I have the power to set you free'
'Come ,along this path we'll walk',
I listened closely as He talked;
Eternal life and 'new life' within
upon Him I place my sin,
peace,wholeness and...

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Beneath the pall of an eldritch moon, 
                           ...

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endless leisure hours as distorted time stretch before me...

like the infinite vista
upon the midwestern plain
farther than the eyes of mine
(an ascetic and copacetic
shortsighted father of two grown
twenty something daughters)
can no longer see,
since sockets severely seared
staring...

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Poems about Poets



Long Division
by Michael R. Burch

for Laura Riding Jackson

All things become one
Through death’s long division
And perfect precision.



Nod to the Master
by Michael R. Burch

If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would...

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Matsuo Basho: English translations of haiku about birds, flowers, candles, life, death.

Naptime!
But my drowsiness is nixed
by busybody warblers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation by Michael R. Burch

Carolers:
the sparrows smile
at their warbling.
—Matsuo Basho, translation by Michael R. Burch

Giving thanks...

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I Feel Like- IFL

I feel like i’m not alive today I feel like i’m dead today and i don't know when or how i'll come back My body is a husk of the person i...

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How I got here, I have no clue.  I do remember being on a cruise.
Passengers were walking, talking, and watching the cerulean blue sea sparkling.
Intrigued by the total awesomeness, I climbed on a thin...

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(Piece is intended to be the most complex vocabulary gothic ever)

Grandiloquence,
mellifluous pulchritudinous,
gaiety of quintessential moistening serendipity,
bile deluge if you show the sanguinary breath,
crimson waterfall sizzling on lava rock hellscape.

Yclept necrophelia maestra,
macabre tableau,
dips douse abyssal incarnate,
now...

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We were bloody.
Bearing the weight 
of a gaping moon like 
young Titans- 
full of arrogant imagination. 
We ran, hellbent.
House after house
playing tricks- 
casting spells with 
veracious foolishness. 
That first pumpkin was 
my stepfather. I watched...

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The warmth no longer comes
it seems to only leave.

The furry ones, all
caught in hypnotic disbelief:
hardening ground's
taken root
where once
gardening grounds
(forsaken, mute)
were once and again
makin' fruit.

Each beast, shaking
like a leaf
(though, truth be told
I've only ever 
seen 'em...

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I asked the shards, whose were on the walls of this narrow corridor.
What is this self? What are this one to do with this life?
Pass through here and we shall write on your husk the...

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We are all improbable in our own way, 
and who can augur the future?  
I never could have laid out my course in advance, 
though in looking back it all makes sense, 
even if...

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Herons fragment the mist,
appear and disappear while remaining motionless.
The skiff rocks as a coal barge trundles past.
A dewy sky shivers.

Nowadays he just sits in a boat looking at Ohio.
This morning the sun reached the top...

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ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might...

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The visit to Monique the Medium on Christmas Day

(A channelled voice whispers)


Every clock in here 
These old faded white wooden ones
Hanging on so many burnt out trees 

That litter the pathway
As they tick
Remind me of...

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The heart has been torn from Humanity,
Spark of Spirit slow draining away.
All that's left are these husks of our insanity
and the promise of another empty day.
How we clutch close the mascots we've made into suns,
fearing...

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I love to spend my October afternoons walking ankle-deep in dried, curled leaves.
They cover the back country roads, the forest floor, and my own front yard.
But, I cannot bear to rake them away, or burn...

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(A lone voice whispers)

Every clock in here 
Even these old white wooden ones

As they tick so regimentally
Reminds me of you

Every single second
Every single minute 

Carries luminescent memories 

Of all the wild but lovely things
We used...

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Two old men. That’s all; not much to look at.
Their frail, broken shadows shrunk against the sunny morning
Brightness slowly searching its way through gnarled branches
Overhead, and crisscrossing the red and black pieces
Upon their welcoming checkerboard.

I...

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TWO OLD GODS

Two old men.
That’s all; not much to look at.
Their frail, broken shadows shrunk against the sunny morning
Brightness slowly searching its way through gnarled branches
Overhead, and crisscrossing the red and black pieces
Upon their welcoming...

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Dusk marks stygian depths of this eldritch eve quay grim specter beneath the moon's silvery sheath surf cleaves with a hiss as the banshees keen weave lure to the thicket where shadows deceive yet beckoning...

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