Long Intent Poems

I am exhausted by bad government excuses to avoid responsibility
and I am, today, sick with excuses to avoid my own responsibility,
well within the bounds of my self-governing authority:

"I'm just a mortal human. I make mistakes.
I...

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I have had a highly redundant,
one might even choose polypathic,
graduate studies experience
spanning my adult life to date.

This began with a semester of Philosophy.
Just enough to learn I wanted something more experiential,
a more embodied communication environment...

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Atmospheric Elocutions For Surviving Armageddon 

Elocution lessons for the morality police 
Persecution of those not callously elite
Convolution of the elongation of the technique 
Revolution from the poor, downtrodden and bleak 

Ageless reckonings that are born...

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BEING AN FBI INFORMANT WEARING WIRES PREGNANT BUYING WEAPONS AND DRUGS FOR THE FBI ARLINGTON HEIGHTS ILLINOIS CHICAGO HAD BEGUN TO TRIGGER UNWANTED EMOTIONS AS I SAT BEHIND MAROON DRAPES PANTING CIRO GARGANO ARSON MURDERER...

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Spiritual Mahjong
Your Move Lord

Is there a God?
A benevolent entity.
An eternal presence presiding over me.
A creator, watching and observing.
All knowing.
Is my end determined and conclusive before it begins, before I begin?
If so, then to what purpose...

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I feel in führer rated and envious...

entrapped within webbed wide world
weft as a rump pulled stilts skein
at warp speed exhibiting
my heroic trumpian wiles
cuz he (johnny come lately) a then 
exemplary hedonist, narcissist, 
and polygamist dons
comical,...

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Summer Solstice 2025

Friday, June twentieth
at 10:42 Post Meridian
Eastern standard time
will find Earth's North Pole tilted
closest toward sun. 

This demarcates
most daylight hours of the year 
for people living 
within the northern hemisphere.

Just shy of the supposed...

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Prolonged offal bout courtesy constipation... redux revisited

Upteenth instance where yours truly
experienced assault upon hindquarters.

A worse hellish fate than perdition
and the closest in the throes 
of agonizing death scene rendition
stabbing sphincter muscle spasms 
wrench yours truly...

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Blue Hunter's Moon of the Festival of Lights.
And the day of Vengeance of our Holy One to comfort all those who mourn.

Isaiah 61:3-11
I Proclaim the acceptable Generation or Year and Day of Yehoshua also known...

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The Original Sin: Rhyming Haiku!
 
Haiku
should never rhyme:
it’s a crime!
-Michael R. Burch
 
The herons stand,
sentry-like, at attention ...
rigid observers of some unknown command.
-Michael R. Burch
 
Late
fall;
all
the golden leaves turn black underfoot:
soot
-Michael R. Burch
 
Dry leaf...

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Left:
Let's start at the beginning
of your ecotherapeutic day.

I'm talking today with Fr. Time,
Earth's only fully self-ordained ecotherapist,
and recently published author of
"Journals of MotherEarth."

We have no corporate sponsorships to report,
although we are for sale
especially if you're...

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Poems about Poems (I)



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer
~~~underwater~~~
watching the shoreline blur
sees through his breath’s weightless bubbles...
Both worlds grow obscure.



Muse/Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

“What will you conceive in...

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Fate decreed sexting/texting while married abominable

Therefore karma caught up to me big time
and delivered yours truly sent to purgatory
(figurative speaking) by casting a spell,
whereby the government issued Safelink
Tracfone got permanently disabled
and all the data
(including contact...

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"The Book of Changes"

Thoughts arrived before words,
1000s of years before
the crossing of curves

always seen to be 
swimming upstream 
against the current

thoughts … and feelings,
in the flow, always arrive 
before words, they are cast 

in the...

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Sonnets LXI-LXX

Erin
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair?
bright carrot?and her milkmaid-pallid skin,

her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children?some conceived in sin,

the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of...

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Each flame 
elegantly weaves in waves
flowing up from resources red cinder hot,
similar in warm color
temperature decrees
of beauty as integrity's truth
trust each surrounding flame.

Each flame 
unique in point of origin below
as ubiquitously flickering fading destinations above.

Yet...

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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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The Making of a Poet
by Michael R. Burch

While I don’t consider “Poetry” to be my best poem—I wrote the first version in my teens—it’s a poem that holds special meaning for me; I call it...

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Sonnets XXXIII-XLI

The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and...

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"The Strange Case of F.T."



They say the dead don’t talk
the stories I have calculated
to deliver a saving grace 
confessional shared amongst 
my equal peers, or so I deem 
you somewhat sometimes seem,
less than me, you...

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Medieval Poems IV



IN LIBRARIOS
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their whores for exotic positions.



Brut (circa 1100 AD, written by Layamon, an excerpt)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R....

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch

In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while...

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Why does dawn dress robust morning,
while dusk undresses sight?
Each dawn incarnates another Earth Day
a lifetime of Easter mornings 
redeeming nocturnal sight's revolution,
another therapeutic day of gift-it-forward light,
some longer,
some shorter 
before naked covered night.

Why life?
To uncover...

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The State of the Art (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has...

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Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me...

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