Long Illness Poems

On an early morning just before school
My tummy is churning my head hurts too
My feet are cold my forehead is hot
I have a runny nose and a tongue with blue dots

“Mom come quick!” I helplessly...

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Rumors
How we arrived at where we are
By Franklin Price
05/03/2020

By now you've heard the rumors
How Covid-19 came to Earth
How it did not come here naturally 
How Wuhan, China gave it birth

Maybe aided by our government
To make...

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Poems about the Coronavirus I


yet another iffy coronavirus haiku #1
by michael r. burch

plagued by the Plague
i plague the goldfish
with my verse



yet another iffy coronavirus haiku #2
by michael r. burch

sunflowers
hang their heads
embarrassed by their coronas

I wrote...

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Psychologically still thirteen 

Ordinarily meaning pre Internet days
familiarization with me would entail
bringing the avid listener 
into my private mancave hideaways
less a physical place than a juncture in relationship, 
(whereby one or the other of us)...

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Where art thou anonymous benefactor...to offer me succor?

Ah... methinks legal tender 
could be a boon to help me bolster 
mein kampf with necessary material equipage,
which prospect to acquire essential 
commodities sabotaged 
at the altar of...

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This is for the Contest - 'Titanic - Fare Thee Well' Sponsored by Tom Woody.
                    ...

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Poems about the Coronavirus II


This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters...

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It's peaceful here in my backyard.
The crows sound happy
with warm October sunlight.

I just read about a deadly gathering in Las Vegas.
Absence of sun-drenched peace.
Inconvenient this time of lost loss.
Death is always inconvenient,
even when invited.

A veteran,
about...

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What Good Are Our Tears?
by Michael R. Burch

What good are our tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence...

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Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve...

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Near Sainthood
by Mirza Ghalib
translation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

On the subject of mystic philosophy, Ghalib,
your words might have seemed deeply profound
and we might have pronounced you a saint...
if only we hadn't found
you...

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No, Freddie can’t say he mourned when his father died and his father’s third wife found Freddie's number and gave him a call to give him the news. His father had been responsible, worked hard,...

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The problem of military reactions
to territorial control issues
is not merely that violence breeds further strategic development
of violence,
although this is no small,
nor amoral, 
concern.

This primal problem of militarism by historic default
is that it is an intrinsically...

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Disability, Illness and Fundamentalism

My brother died of Cystic Fibrosis, 
When I was twelve and he fourteen, 
It took away his ambitions, 
To study at Oxford - the pipe organ’s steam. 

I understand being born with...

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In Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"
she paints a nationalistically wealthy saint
where also lives a monochromatically utilitarian narcissist,
sucking on attachment to fame and power
for bought and sold ZeroSum accounting Souls.

If the perfectly powerful pure patriarchal patriot
were your...

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DT2 came to me, unwillingly and clandestinely,
only because he was referred by his mother,
who was concerned that he was growing up and out
to become an ego-terrorist,
and she had heard of my feminist work as ecotherapist--
so...

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OTETS THE MANY DAYS AND NIGHT YOU LENT ME YOUR 
DIVINE EAR THROUGH PRAYER DURING HARDSHIP TIMES 
AND ILLNESS RAISING MY GRANDDAUGHTER KEEPING HER 
SAFE IN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS IN WISCONSIN OUR LADY OF 
MOUNT CARMEL...

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News release woman gets only 
four years for stabbing five people 
with a large butcher knife saying 
I’m going to Mort you why would 
Wisconsin concealed a butcher 
knife dangerous weapon out the 
hands of...

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Harriet Harris, née Kuritsky gave up the ghost...

~ May fourth, 2005
wedded bliss nearly fifty years
half a century almost
me not most favorite grown offspring,
she (when alive) did boast,
about youngest sister and her family,
unlike me – severely...

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Skin of Terror
- Daniel Henry Rodgers

(The stage lights come up slowly on Michael's face, which is crisscrossed with wrinkles from his fuming anxiety. He peers out into the gloominess at the wheel and tightly clutches...

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CRISIS SESSION FBI HUMAN RESOURCE DIVISION NON-REDACTED
FBI: HELLO WHAT IS YOUR EMERGENCY

AGENT BROWN: HELLO THIS IS AGANT BROWN AND THAT DARK PLACE IS RETURNING AGAIN I AM IN CRISIS AGAIN 

FBI: OKAY WE ARE HERE...

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MY PRAYERS ARE WITH ALL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS MY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SITUATION STEMMED FROM MY WEARING WIRES PREGNANT FOR THE FBI BUYING WEAPONS AND DRUGS FROM JUNK SICK COPS BECAUSE THE FBI WARNED...

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Domestic violence survivor killed after reporting my abusive ex husband to the fbi he’d began extreme attacks on me mental cruelty mostly first hitting me in my back with a brick I still stayed what...

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My first grade field trip begin Joseph Medill school of journalism Chicago my first grade class sang African American spiritual hymns performing at the Schubert theater the museum of science and industry the museum of...

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MY ASSASIN HIDDEN OUT OF SIGHT AWAITS ME TO LEAVE MY HOME AT WHICH TIME SHE POINCE RIPPING PAGES ON MY NIGHT STAND SCRATCHING THE LOCKS ON OUR DOOR MY DISABLED FAMILY PANICS AT FIRST...

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