Long Keepsakes Poems

Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has...

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Oasis
by Michael R. Burch 
 
for Beth
 
I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.
 
I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,...

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On this day 40 years ago in 1978 my mother, Jacqueline Anne Trestrail, left this world after a relatively short battle with cancer - she was 46. Jimmy Carter was President and Annie Hall won...

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Groundhog day 2024 or Forty one days since 2023 Winter Solstice

Rather than be a day late
and dollar short, I opted   
to post poem acknowledging
the second of February,
where eponymous groundhog
gets his (most often male)
foretelling...

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Troop ships loading, crowded docks
Mums and sisters waving off
Go with keepsakes, golden locks
Some men hug while many doff

Eric, soldier single stands
Beryl, lonesome widow cares
Many kissing holding hands
Eric stands and Beryl dares

Bump the soldier, make excuse
Apologizing...

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Personal vicissitudes pronounced irrepressible self loathing

Ever since mine late boyhood
when unstoppable coded 
cellular processes did segue
I experienced abhorrence
toward yours truly,
an extremely introverted kid,
whose parents nor siblings
(one younger and older sister) could
not arouse him 

out of...

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The din awakens me
Hall smoke alarm screaming like a banshee
Smoke everywhere, though I see no flames
I reach up through the thick black fumes and yank the battery
Silencing the banshee, but I hear sirens approaching

Thank god...

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To a Mouse
by Robert Burns
translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sleek, tiny, timorous, cowering beast,
Why’s such panic in your breast?
Why dash away, so quick, so rash,
In a frenzied flash
When I would be loath to run after you
With...

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People sometimes tell me the heirlooms given to me hold no value over how my heart feels, but these things have memories, stories of where they've come from that tug at my heart.  They’re...

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Isaiah 43:1 “But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou...

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Private Residence

Sign at the gate – no solicitors –
Beyond the rosewood door sanctuary in seclusion
Untouched by hands racing round
A face framed by chimes and alarms –
Measures of mincing minutes
Exiled with suitcases packed
To astral planes of...

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Aesthetic works, I think I’ve some,
Creative stage or room decorations? My pleasure. I can.
Compassionate heart, I got especially for young and old,
Drum skill? I could be one of your band members, just call.

Experience in teaching...

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Trusted (non Trumpeting) Flora And Fauna Emerge Out...
Of Hibernation To Rejoice Arrival Of Spring 2019

Accordingly, other than
meteorologists plenti schooled
ascertaining onset of temperate air
more particularly otter den non humans
unassumingly (ferreted out), who bear
the tidings, when that...

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God bless little angels brought unto me,
Watch over them beneath heavens grace.
My first of seven blessings most precious gift,
Treasures hearts keepsakes.
Number one the oldest, my rocker baby,
Dancing away with musics sweet lullaby.
The lyrical light of...

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The promise is a cell phone battery dies, or bill not paid, or not in a good 
                reception area.
	The...

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      Before my flowing, poetic pen is hushed in Quietus,
And I have reached my journey's end with folded hands;
           ...

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Before my flowing, poetic pen is hushed in Quietus,
And I have reached my journey's end with folded hands;
            Departed into my dreamless sleep beneath...

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Sarcomas hatch like caviar
in St. Jude chemo-fire inversions,
where leviathans lay magnetars
to suck the blood of
virgins.

Their celestial suckers nurse their mothers
through quantum-dot tunnels, converging
what little life force
might milk
metastatic roots while purging,

and scute steroids discarding the hair
that...

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Carefree in leisure time, one blasé tourist, 
almost happy, I once had collected a complicated stone;
after the sunny hours had ended and last opportunity
for keepsakes began.

In my hand the stone had kept all of its...

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October 1, 2021

My Vagabond Heart, wherever you are in place and time... 

This morning, upon waking, I heard the sounds of Autumn calling.
A North wind rattled my window panes, russet leaves were falling. 
As they...

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In the delicate heart of the loving, no other can compare to the
Soft tender spirit of the one known as mother, what a cherished
Rose of tiffany glass, fragile, beautiful but in strength’s resolve,
A timeless piece...

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2/23/21

From May to April
Faithful
Remaining grateful
And thankful
Hiking around with a dog named Hazel
Sometimes watching a movie or something on cable
Got to make the best of it, or else it would be shameful
Far too often people being...

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There didn’t have to
be a reason
no one thing
no trigger
it was always boiling
just beneath the surface
always.

It could have been
the number of soldiers
lying empty on the desk
next to the ashtray.
You know the one
the one that left
the two...

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February second - requires one
with acute hearing to cock, and ear
turnips tickling the nose nostrils
delicate hairs (instagram ideal outlook) subtly,
markedly, lively..., yet gently flair
soon harkening shrieks

of delightful analogous funfair
no stranger to Renaissance Faire
of pitch perfect...

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Not by chance do I find myself
Awake in the dead of night; caught by fright.
The stinging pangs of a grace far from touch.
Are you real? Why such longing?
How and why do you make my heart...

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