Long Icarus Poems

Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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State of the Art (IV)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...”  — W. ...

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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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Poems about Butterflies and Bees



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

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



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were,...

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Various Heresies 2

You
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though strange communion between us.

For thirty years You would not open to me;
You remained...

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Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is...

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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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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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“Here the fierce with the thin pointed tail,
Who passes mountains and breaks arms and walls!
Here who with stench can the world assail!”

So my duke started to talk with his calls;
And hinted then it to get...

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Deor's Lament

(Old English/Anglo-Saxon poem circa the 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland endured the agony of exile:
an indomitable smith wracked by grief.
He suffered countless sorrows;
indeed, such sorrows were his bosom companions
in that frozen...

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“The Blue Nazarene” 

caeruleum caelum 
in nubibus
caeruleum

caeruleum caelum
in nubibus 
de hyacintho nazarene

testimonium:

white stallions, 

clouds commanding
Christus imperium
above all below 

all below 
now present to worship 
a secular ghost

stopped dead in their tracks
those ridiculous battalions
games of war...

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Is it time again
Is this another day again
where I sit up once more
waste my fingers to the bone
to describe my grievance with the Sorceress
named Sarah...
No...not this time
Is it time again
is this another day when
I sit...

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A voice, a silky sweet voice i my ear
a whisper, a whispering question hanging in the air
but there's a conflict of interest
I'm no master nor hero
not even a zero, I'm just a boy
a boy craving...

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You’re the headless horseman running on half a heart 
You shouldn’t know where to go but you just do 
And you’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached to you 
Lost puzzle pieces, collecting dust,...

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In the copper-clad cradle of time
where gears whir fugues to forgotten dreams.....
the fog—a somnolent specter—drifts.....
veiling the calculus of progress
a manuscript etched by steam and soot.

Hark The hiss of pistons proclaims
a triumph—or perhaps a dirge—
for we...

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Often times I wonder if I may have missed 
a greater calling or purpose in my life.
As a young man I was frivolous and non-sensical
when it came to asking the most important questions:
“Why am I...

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*“Named after Pieter Both, who was the first Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, Pieter Both is one of the most beautiful mountain peaks in Mauritius.” Mauritiusnow.com>blog>things-to-do>pieter-both
**************************************************************
        ...

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sun rays settle skies
prism shelters diversity -
kids breaking hard bricks

wind spreads gentle seeds
prayer evokes mute silence -
too many lost souls

rain drops whet dry soil
scope scoops whirlpools of dry tears -
god should know better

earth circles tailspins
faith...

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"Freedom's Lament"

Oh sweet Freedom how quick you have gone from Groom to Widower.
How saddened are those who succumbed and labored so freed we could all be after Freedom had so long toiled and quarried to...

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Pretenders in the mouth like lemons.
Hamartia.

Is wishing
Denying?
Do I
Deny You?

A dirge by the pier
is the darkness I hear
when You are not here,
when I tell myself
I will always fear.

Yet You visit, still,
my lightless room
and the Breath of...

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"Gods and Monsters"


Ying Yang
Black White
Dark Light
One God meets another 
in the middle of the 
night, are they at odds with one another?
Or just shuffling Decks of cards,
playing with each other 
for the same stakes
they're the...

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Finally to Burn: Icarus, Resurrected
by Michael R. Burch

Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand

and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands

where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting

and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting

and all I remember
upon awaking

is: to Love sometimes
is...

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We warrior poets
calligraphy ride boldly into the foggy fray
Our ancient, iron-will pens
are always getting battle-tested
time and time again     by cloudy blot resistance
We always rolled scroll win ... 
writing off into the...

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