Long Idly Poems

Poems about Poems V

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She...

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Randomling 1:  Matthew Macfadyen

I believe I'm in love with Matthew Macfadyen
He inspires in me a terribly bad yen
But as poetry goes
His name 'spires woes
Cause nothing rhymes with "Macfadyen”.


Randomling 2: Birthday Wishes
  
For my birthday,...

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These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch 

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find...

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Stood I there, that last day,
On an iron bridge...
An aqueduct by design,
Where, looking dreamily out over
The Ernes Lower Lough,
My compressed shadow 
Momentarily paused -
To contently recline:
Amidst coy Junes radiant beams 
of sweet benign!
All was stilled,...

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When they came to a side hall Joulupukki stopped.
     “Do you feel the magic?”  He said to her.  She nodded.  He stepped around the corner, on the far...

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On the canvas of a cold, grey, winter sky,
In large black letters above the Iron Gate,
Read the message: "Arbeit Macht Frei".
A shrewdly sinister, propagandist lie,
Designed to deceive all of our eventual fate.
This was the very...

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(A Christmas vacation vignette)

Lisa and I choppered onto Manhattan Island yesterday morning. We’d both felt toasted—so we took naps—and yay! We awoke recharged.

Later that evening, Lisa and I were at the ‘Elsie’ Rooftop Bar, in...

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His walk into town would prove fateful that day,
As his mind wandered idly while finding his way.
His footsteps were brisk like fall chill in the air,
Past Wellington Gate, south of Denby town square.

He paused for...

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Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I’m afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that’s second...

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Hidden beauty resides not in the grace like charms
Of coy smiles 
Painted across a gentle Madonnas face.
Nor is she vested within the chastened vows
Of saintly knights; encased Great-Helm:
Thus maketh the pale maidens meek pulse
To so...

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 play at Full Volume





"MOTHER" 

Mother Earth 
is Crying

Her heart is breaking
Earth is shaking violently

She is hurt and 
She is angry

Her tears no longer reign
Oceans swelling dry 

all the creatures 
She spits out 

on Her...

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More than 300,000 spirits awakened, and rose up that day,
Above the pristine manicured and landscaped grounds.
They ascended high enough to overlook the shameful acts
Being perpetrated on the Capital’s historic mounds.

July 24,2024:  two hundred rag-wrapped...

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VII.

An involuntary shudder as I watch her 
Spread                           ...

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Me: "Bing, the intended rhyme scheme for the poem below is ABABAB; and I made additional changes in line 9 of the poem in order to improve its meter and make more vivid and clarify...

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Expiry date               
                 14.

I taught...

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These cascaded tears are black in complexion,
I started arranging them when I was fourteen.
These broken stars are the horizons of fear, 
I started numbering them when I was ten. 
These words were the scars seen
in...

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I know of a river of more than average 
Sorts...
Meandering, when not dallying to maunder,
Between many differing contours 
And unruly contorts;
Where a privileged youth once
Happily sought -
Pursuing about his passions
In the traditional methods 
By which...

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Cluttering above huddled rooftops
Of sprawling villages 
And shy provincial towns;
Rising sharply amidst swooping
Declinations;
Hesitating when gathering at the
Tangled woodland perimeters of
Outlying greenland bounds,
Jostled apex ridges detach among
Themselves...
When habitually roused from early
Mornings
Newly awakened sounds.

Electrical milk floats whir...

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Peter Piper was ever punctilious, like minty nature's painstaking paintings,
Or the palsied skies of one pretty evening, in the hour of the sun's fainting.

Peter lived upon a small, fertile farm, and was one of five,...

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These are poems about recollection, poems about remembrance, poems about memories, poems about time and things we forget as well as remember...

Lady's Favor
by Michael R. Burch

May 
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal 
nettles
and may
May
cry...

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Welcome to our TAMILNADU 
The land of prosperity

Where our mother earth dons,
green dress and blue crown,
All year round

Welcome to our TAMILNADU 
The land of divine dance

Where people here still practice
ancient dances bharatanatiyam, mayilatam, 
oyilatam, thapatam...

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The Persistence of a Memory of Apricot Shampoo
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the...

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These are my modern English translations of the ancient Japanese poems (waka/tanka) of Ono no Komachi…

"It's over!"
Your words drizzle like dismal rains,
bringing tears,
as I wilt with my years.
—Ono no Komachi, translation by Michael R. Burch

The...

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Le Bateau ivre (“The Drunken Boat”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
translation by Michael R. Burch

The impassive river carried me downstream
as howling warriors slashed the bargemen's throats,
then nailed them, naked, to their former posts,
while I observed all...

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Sotoba Komachi is a modern Noh play by Yukio Mishima (1925-1970). Mishima's play is based on an ancient work by Kan'ami Kiyotsugu (1333-1384). The first kanji means "stupa" (the dome of a shrine) while the...

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