Long Intimacy Poems

I’m in distress
I can’t express
How I feel deep down inside
This feeling is a terrible tide
How do I impress
Everyone here in excess?
I’m just here to simply abide
By God’s Law, I don’t subside

My tears are diamonds in...

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Epigrams by Michael R. Burch



Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch
 
Show me your most intimate items of apparel:
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip ...



Negotiables
by Michael R. Burch

Love should be more than the sum of its...

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Poems about Dogs

This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my...

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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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Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp...

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I wrote a sad but true urban legend called “Dillen and the DMV” last week.
Here follows an update.

Background Review:

One of my health care employees, Dillen, has wicked ADD, borderline intelligence, not qualifying for disability supports,...

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Dear Andrew Cohen,

I am riveted by “Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening.”  Your theme that enlightenment need not be limited to elitist and eisegetical experiences, memory, but invites us to become co-travelers...

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Greetings to those who would willingly seek admission to theater of the absurd. Zoltan Goliath and Otis Trench are masters of the avant-garde genre silent musicals for the imaginary stage, an art form sui generis....

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~ Thank  You  God  ~
 ( The  Bell  )


~O~



 God 
Thank You for 
All your Blessings 
You give us daily 
Bread every single day 
I'm thankful for all 
That You...

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I guess I’m sorry I was leaving so soon
It came out of the blue,
It came out of the blue moon…blue moon…
I couldn’t find my left shoe

I could have been here 
For a little while, while,...

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"A dressed day has disrobed into the depth of a drawer's nightstand." 

(Oh, how positively awesome that what can be sorted out in such an explanatory pattern that a difference would maketh a day.)

The muskiness...

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For the past thirty seven years, living for me was knowing that I do not know
I have been yearning for what I do not have a name for
The knowledge of the presence of this nameless,...

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Dear Neighbors,
community co-investors,
sharing an outdoor green riverside Commons
and an indoor
historical CommonSpace

Both, and all, sacred
to panentheistic me
and probably more mundanely secular
to monoculturing LeftBrain dominant
verbally rationalistic
you

And yet, co-relational lives of thought
and feeling always matter
to cooperative
effective communication resilience
through...

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I stumbled over Paul Tillich's translation
of the MessiahMentor's Other Great Commission.

The Great Commission we learned in Sunday School
was to go out and convert the barbarians
and savages to Christianity.

Yet this Other Great Commission feels like a...

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My gay white boyhood
struggled with the theological problem
of personally appreciating heterosexual superiority 
sacred stories
and multiply mistranslated word-choices
of Jesus Christ

Within a Christian
monotheistic
evangelically triumphalist doctrine.

This personal mindbody intimacy problem
may be iconic
unveiling my transparent
and vulnerable Savior's distancing 
of...

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This is my translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's second elegy from his Duino Elegies, which he began composing at Duino Castle in 1912. 

Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Every angel...

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I've heard about non-violent communication
but wasn't deeply listening.
It didn't seem to have much of a plot,
a lack of creative tension,
drawing my full survivalist attention.

So this is probably all wrong
that I'm not owning my conspiring dissonant...

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Bounteous mass media mechanizations...
generate fixation spurring sexual exploitation
evidenced courtesy adulation
particularly regarding young females,
whose seductive poses 
linkedin selling (hard) wares
versus advertising males sporting, harkening,
approximating Adonis with remarkable beauty. 

Western civilization commercialization,
commodification, communication 
methodologies adrip with deification,...

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Good new,good news He said to me
'I have the power to set you free'
'Come ,along this path we'll walk',
I listened closely as He talked;
Eternal life and 'new life' within
upon Him I place my sin,
peace,wholeness and...

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Much has been felt
then written
about loneliness at the top

Less written,
yet perhaps far more often felt,
about claustrophobia in the center.

Problems with delegation,
boundaries,
predictable timelines,
responsive management focus,
follow through performance,
closeted partisanship,
competitions to be heard
listened to
appreciated
respected 
for our therapeutic,
and not...

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I am just finishing my morning meditation when I hear my doorbell ring. It actually sounds more like that buzzing sound you hear if you fry a fat fly on one of those electronic bug...

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Reaping short terms benefits...

before marital savings bond matured
as a then quinquagenarian.

Courtesy gerontologists medical practitioners
allowing, enabling, and providing
the elderly population to live
longer and healthier lives.

Linkedin with longevity loosely translates
to resurgent libido spurring
older folks predilection
to participate in...

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Rebuilding bipartisan explorations,
at least two-sided appositions,
like generously inclusive
and conservatively exclusive
worldviews of MotherEarth

Sacred polytheistic strains
and peak experiences felt
through love of life 
resilient win/win relationships
weightless

Freeing secular monopolistic brains
deeply thoughtful glad
LeftBrain speaking minds
no longer stuck
in win/lose  sad
bad
mad...

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*last winter break*

I woke up abruptly, my chest gripped and tight. My face felt hot but my arms stung as if frostbitten. I gasped for air that wouldn’t come, as if I had a plastic...

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Walking past each other and just by chance
My heart skips a beat and my knees turn weak
Your eyes lock with mine in a fleeting glance
In a ricochet of emotion I just cannot speak 

Our time...

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