Long Improbably Poems

I was in the shotgun seat
in 1960 Lansing Michigan
headed straight as a harddrive
through ghettoizing "Negra Section"
hunting down our commercial whitebread 
heavenly ThriftyAcres

Wanna be a WalMart ImPlantation
but not Southern enough,
somehow,
to withstand straight-male competition
in fluent White Privileged...

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I came to AllSouls
looking for permanent sanctuary.

Sanctuary,
not only from a Rumpian absence of 
civility
and non-violent trust
and integrity
and compassion,
but also pro-actively for an orthodox health eco-school 
for learning to secure these passioned gifts
through cooperative
pro-active
co-arising practice.

A permanently...

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Tonight I heard a terminally cancered 
yet not cancelled
singer songwriter say
"I can't wait for life to not be hard
before choosing to be happy."

She spoke well from her own experience
and I remain moved,
but also curiously confused
about...

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POEMS ABOUT POOL SHARKS

Fair Game
by Michael R. Burch

At the Tennessee State Fair,
the largest stuffed animals hang tilt-a-whirl over the pool tables
with mocking button eyes,
knowing the playing field is unlevel,
that the rails slant, ever so slightly,...

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POEMS ABOUT POOL SHARKS

Shark
by Michael R. Burch

They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light...

I am not of them,
as I...

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Up here, where the lone trees grow, the air is clear and the time is now.

Up here, where the lone trees grow, my emotions alternate between what I see and what I know.

The only easy...

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HER WONDERFUL MOTHER NATURE


Once upon her entering and exiting  
Her comings and goings
Groceries, gym or mall
Mother Nature made the mirrors love her
All-knowing reflection,  
No adjustments needed... 
Please...not one correction
Causing confusion, she's unflawed
Everywhere, in...

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I hate me
More than any of you could
Still i am
The man who stood
Gravity couldn't pull me down
Looking through space
From the outside in
Taking each pain with a widening grin
Improbably Probable
normally curious
but curiously abnormal
Sliding down elongated giraffes...

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Framed blemish.
Heavy as a tumor.
Solid as surrender.
Dig into epidermis.
Uproot the moment.
Unclean kernel.

Hard, cold reflection.
Show me pretty.
Clogged pores.
Yellow teeth.
Rheumy eyes.
Ugly is as ugly does.

Smile at the mirror. 
Try to forget.
This is you. 
Forever unlovely.
Look at what...

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A vertical sliver pries into the doorway, a beam from the watchful eye in the hall
While amber stars in cages, captives in lampposts, shout prophecies beneath the moon
Obscured by trees
Their cries filter into the window
And...

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We went to climb trees
in the jungle gyms of green apple orchards,
bare legs dangled
toes dipped into shady pools of sky.

Secret girlfriends climbed barefooted
onto impossibly roomy branches,
their skirts improbably short,
in the swinging bowers.

Memory plays its tricks
perhaps...

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There have been moments in my life enjoyed
more for the forest than the fallen leaves.
White drops of ink that improbably bleed
right off their journal to rupture the void
no one had known existed ‘til destroyed
by the...

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Suspended improbably on shoulders
Hunched by years of glacial attrition
And threaded through a forest of boulders:
The path that holds the key to my mission
I speak allegorically, because
This tortured path has ne’er been seen before
And every rock...

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