Long Inattentive Poems

God's Return Ticket

Did you ever wonder about the Almighty’s criteria or selection process for reincarnation of souls back on Earth? Just think some famous politician, movie star, sports figure,criminal, dictator, and so on could use...

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Stuck in place…
Free in space…
you’re insane 
I’m as sweet as sugar cane…
Whatever happened to your unique personality?
Whatever happened to your sanity? 
Has it transformed to insanity?
I like the way you make me feel
Oh, you don’t...

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Deliver my shattered soul – 
It has done more harm than good
I felt darkness take its toll
When I wore the abyss shirt with a hood…

Shadows dare to consume me
Darkness will disappear drastically
Crows get scared away...

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These are modern English translations of haiku and tanka by Takaha Shugyo...

ochitsubaki ware naraba kyuryu e otsu

Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
—Takaha Shugyo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

dôkefuku nugazu tentômushi...

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Am I really this old,
so many ghosts
beckoning?
—Michael R. Burch

Sleepyheads!
I recite my haiku
to the inattentive lilies.
—Michael R. Burch

Stillness:
the sound of petals
drifting down softly together...
—Miura Chora, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The sky tries to assume
your eyes’...

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These are my modern English translations of Takaha Shugyo haiku and tanka...

hatogata horarete ichiju haya mebuku

A single tree
with a heart carved into its trunk
blossoms prematurely
—Takaha Shugyo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

dôkefuku nugazu tentômushi no...

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I’ve always been your little girl,
Even now that I’m an adult.
Yes, I know I’ll always be your baby,
And I grew up way too fast.
But there’s something I can’t stop from happening dad,
And in some ways...

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Villanelle : The Cricketer’s Hakka : « How’s Zaat ! »

Balls thud into pads bats gloves or whisk past batsmen
At bowler’s end or square leg umpires stare stand
« How’s Zaat ! » yell players game’s...

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These are original haiku by Michael R. Burch and his translations of haiku by the Japanese masters Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, Masaoka Shiki, and others. 

Am I really this old,
so many ghosts
beckoning?
—Michael R. Burch

Sleepyheads!
I recite...

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Being in the mind of a savage.

All I know is how to act ferociously.
Manipulating the minds of the weak, fearful, and the victims.
Beating them into submissive.
Emasculating the strongest, just to see him break.
Dismiss him of...

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NO ONE REALLY CARES

Part 2

With a scheme from a team of human traitors who are unclean,
Straight up extreme and using it in a deceitful way, 
Holding KNOWLEDGE of natural law, but manipulated bringing us decay,
May...

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Little Coffee House 

It’s the coffee counter line-up
A conveyor belt of people 
Ready for their little treat
A little piece of comfort
From their favorite beanery
I strum as I watch them 
My guitar like an old friend
They...

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In the mid 80's, I took a job as a receptionist for a wholesale floral company.
Encased in a glass claustrophobic space, I answered their busy phone lines
as I gazed at the warehouse walls of greenery...

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We live today in a world of great tumult
And of rising uncertainty and anxiety 
Which pervade the world stage like a cancer

Despite soaring technological advances
Our environment and our home Earth
Are bearing an unimaginable burden

People are...

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in an
          angst-                    saturated
   ...

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In the mirror, one day, the stranger will stand and you will gaze long,
The shadow of what was, shall fade into the unknown to be.
You allowed others to be the carriers of self, and they...

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First-Person Personal
By Sy Roth

Here adrift wrapped in a coat of heebeejeebies
Fearful of using the first-person personal
Masking it instead by holograms of itself,
Playful non-entities cavorting among the semi-living.

Used to squirrel the words away like nuts now...

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SPIRIT AND STONE &
A GREAT LAKE NEARBY

Her father was
a difficult contradiction,
annoyingly similar to a certain
type of teacher, minister or priest,
to a certain type of imam, rabbi
or occasional poet, a confounding
combination of spirit and stone,
a faith...

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(in memoriam, Eugene Lawler, d. January 29, 2012, aged 83 years)

--- Note:  "The singing machine" is a not so tongue-in-cheek reference to Gene and his penchant for singing whenever and wherever he wished, as...

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No colder winter's evening reawakens, in an abrupt
glance, this memory from others already faded
in the inattentive recollection of a son's mind;
even insignificant moments are worthy of thought.

A pubescent boy unlearned and precarious at giving advice,
but...

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Here they come,
 not one by one
 but the majority out of reach
 doubting reasons to impeach.

It's okay to have a bully president
 tweeting nonsense, bias, wordings without precedent,
 stroke his ego, praise his fool...

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Where then the emotive happiness
with such procrastinated enchantment brings
desirous supposedly encountered
and romantic wanderings heady cadence
which pins the inattentive to the skins of longing

It is said to be lost in the surge
to swirl with giddy waltz
yes...

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I loathe you-

    I especially hate your face-

        But, I really hate that I miss
          
...

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The roar of the neighbor's tractor
as it pulls the cultivator,
the buzz of the helicopter
spraying the planted field,
familiar sounds of summer
near my little rural home.
A distant howling coyote
coveting my clucking hens,
the crowing of the rooster
proclaiming his...

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Images of incineration interrupt
Infernal imagery imposes in intricate intervals, illegible to those ill with ignorance
Inadequate ideologies imply impoverish ways, never to be incriminated no matter how idiotic
Inattentive to our imaginary inflation issues 
Improvident to the...

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