Long Keening Poems

I have to admit
The school where I work
Needs everyone to be
Able to speak Spanish.
Because the parents do.
We are an 82 percent
Spanish-speaking community.
I’ve taken Spanish 4 times.
And I have failed Spanish 4 times.
I have no idea...

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Beyond the wispy, secretive slick and silent faerie wonderland
Forthwith and within, and among the angels, are mindful mountains,
Protecting the delicate,feeling-forth creatures, who slumber amongst the roses.
Roses of colors not experienced on this planet, because these...

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I have had a couple of ridiculously easy choices this week.
Take Predisone, a drug, and breathe.
Or stop breathing, but be myself and die.
Asthma is kicking my hair out of my face this week.

The trouble with...

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These are the best sports poems by Michael R. Burch, Part II

The Locker
by Michael R. Burch

All the dull hollow clamor has died
and what was contained,
removed,
reproved
adulation or sentiment,
left with the pungent darkness
as remembered as the sudden...

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Tick...
Time has moved on
but I’m standing still...
No matter where I go, I can never run away.
Gray, gray, gray, it’s all gray, everything, gray.
Tock...
They say you're at peace now,
so, I'm sorry if I'm being selfish
for craving...

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“Mindgames, Figs and a Dictionary”


Have you ever wondered 
where you’d be 
if there were absolutely no 
dictionaries?

You could make up almost any word
and give it any meaning.
Like Figs are jewels for chewing on
and words are...

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gripping numbness
ripples across my face,
infinite timed tears
burn through my skin, 
glittering a fire
of unrivaled suffering 

grief beyond measure 
rips apart my psyche, 
keening at a moonless sky 
I am bereft of my star,
mourning an existence...

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in the bright light of day you appeared...
a gilded angel with falcon wings,
you rose up out of the desert sands 
and your gentle beauty struck me dumb - 
sending a tremor through my soul...

marvelling, pretending...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (III)



Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of...

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I have been to places people only dream of.
A bright place, a beautiful place, an open place.
A place that I felt was meant for me.

I have seen sights that most people never see.
Light, and Love,...

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The swordsman who draws his blade
Heart racing at the keening of steel on scabbard 
Tension coiled, poised for the unleashing
Held back by muscles tight with glee.

I am as the soldier, held in stance,
The lioness crouched...

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Not a flag was unfurled,
and no cornet trilled,
as the rain-swollen clouds,
the bleak valley filled.
 
The wind blowing cold
with a chill that pervades
as the caisson's old wheels
creaked through the glades
 
where leafless Live Oaks
their limbs upward...

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Wailing, screaming, and keening were things I was not
familiar with, until I got the shingles in a very tender place.
Then they became my go-to-noises. My husband had to wear
headphones, because it was so loud, ...

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In 1985, we had three daughters.
They were 5, 10, and 11.
So life was fun, of course.
Each daughter had a gerbil.
Flopsy, Crumbone and Taylor.
Don’t ask me which is which.
They are rodents.

I broke my leg on a...

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Hear unsilenced hope here,
Nothing is not lost.

Hopelessness the enemy
of justice
round some other's bend.

Music resounds appositions
against fear.

Anthems rise solidarity
within Earth's righteous anger.

Praise conserves liberal motion.

Emotion co-arises dipolar passions.

Climate pathology may not become
the responsibility of white privilege.
Yet,...

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ii.

And the glands beside your heart
Some secret of evolution they couldn't understand
So they never troubled themselves to puzzle
Out why you, their sphinx, remained silent
Now begin to purr.
It frightens you.
You had purred after they scratched your...

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The Keening

Disconsolate depressions on the valley floor of green
With bodies bent and keening, young girls and their kind
Take to the dead fields down, to fall upon their knees
Scattered, sickly tombstones, laid flat on mud and...

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And again he took up his pen
To place upon pages
That his soul and heart may be heard
His message may be listened to
Though he has no voice
For the one, the only one
And he awoke
In dream

Once more...

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LONESOME
SOUND 
			
Old man said he could hear that whistle blow a hundred miles 
and they could write a song about that. 
Said he could tell how many cars a train freighted 
just by how sad...

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Growing, manifesting, enlarging as the minutes pass. Teeth mashing together, grinding back and forth, licking its lips voraciously, eyes keening in for a meal, done letting time circle around, done chasing it down like a...

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More to me – MTY

More than ever, pain-free means more to me than ever before.
When you have been wailing and keening in pain you will understand.
Before this pain, I would have said God, my family...

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A written word wistfully wrought into a compendium grim,
Of the darkling ravens beset upon the plutonian shores,
Hither did your shapeless muse invade our psyche and vapid minds dim,
Edgar has retired his effete quill yet still
it...

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Under the wrought iron arch and gateway
crawling with both wild and deep red creepers
complimented by evergreens.
The fall colors are splendid.

Most of the flowers are giving way 
to the chill, and the swans are graceful and...

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~  For Dad - some heroes don't wear a cape - I miss you dearly.  ~


     there stood upon a trodden sod
 a knight-in-armor, steed and rod
devoted, whole, to...

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Milanda keeps the voice to herself; she likes the keening of it.
The wails keep her on her toes, as the poltergeist rules her.
The shudders are drawn, and there are ghoulish shadows.
This is as it must...

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