Long Key Poems

Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis, high bred poiet?s of mine

     ("Thus always I cause the death of tyrants.”)
the purported line Brutus uttered 
after assassinating Julius Caesar.

     Alternatively...

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In every dawn that breaks anew,
In every dream, and skies of blue,
A woman’s strength, steadfast and true,
Guides the world in all we do.
Through ages past and times untold,
Their stories rise, so brave, so bold,
In quiet...

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Unique: I need someone to hold me and tell
me it's alright.
I need someone to hold my hands and feel
my pain.
I need someone to kiss away my pain.
I need someone to look into my eyes and...

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How unparticular the day had particularly been,
On March the third of two-thousand and eighteen,
For the caretaker at an historic Adirondack Inn,
Had lacked company, and therefore, dopamine.

 ‘Twas Sunday when all the guests had fled,
From either...

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The First Valentine Poem

Charles d’Orleans (1394-1465) has been credited with writing the first Valentine poem for his wife in 1415. Charles wrote the first Valentine poem in the first year of his captivity while being...

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"Open Oceans"



Kneeling on pearls
wisdom preys

praying
preying

hungry hearts
count the days 

wasting away
in all that preying 

for prayers 
to be answered

children become
strangers

reading 
strange words

finding 
themselves puzzled

genuflecting to a deity
they do not know, nor wish to

fumbling
mouths closed,

swallowed hole
in the...

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"The Payload" 

The payload 
came crashing down
like rain expelled
from the fat belly 
of a ruinous pregnant cloud 
bilious with buxom promise

it came crashing down 
like school fish released 
from the tight confines
of a course rope...

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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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LOVE POEMS III by Michael R. Burch

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch about passion, desire, lust, sex, dating, relationships, devotion and marriage. 


Violets
by Michael R. Burch

Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to...

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State of the Art (IV)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...”  — W. ...

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Wonderland
by Michael R. Burch
 
We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test
the beatific anthems of the blessed,
the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s
sincere religion. Magnified, the lens
shot back absurd reflections of each...

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SELF REFLECTIONS

These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections, impressions and self-reflection. 

Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch 

for anyone struggling with self-image

She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she's grossly...

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Poems about Poems VI

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood?
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the Muse
with reprimands of Dr. Seuss.

The...

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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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I was skeptically listening 
to a retiring social researcher,
and problem-solving imaginer,
from the American Enterprise Institute;

An Institute
I usually find more destitute
of bicameral consciousness than not,
and thereby with less healthy resonant imagination
than more pathological dissonance.

But, I found...

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Sonnet LXXXI-LXXXIX

Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew...

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World's Longest Love Poem (second edition)


Title: My love my all

Edited by Izunna Okafor


Editor's Note:

Out of their ardency, eighteen poets and poetry lovers identified with the need to give the 2020 Valentine celebration a poetic taste...

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The young lady's car slowed to a stop ...

As she pulled as far off the highway, (onto the shoulder), as she could
(Allowing for any snow plow that might come along).
She had chosen poorly this time
Believing...

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Fulfilled fantasies and legitimate realities…you do know how to please…
Are you listening to my voice of longing and yearning?
No, don’t backstab me with your broken promises…stop being a horrid tease…
Do not worry, Lord, I am...

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FORTUNES READ the sign displayed
TRINKETS, CHARMS AND SPELLS
The store had not been here yesterday
shades of candles, books and bell
Drapes were hung from side to side
The windows all were dark
Where was this place a day ago?
Just...

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March  2026
The final weeks of the CCC plan:
Damian and Polly planned the
Copy Cat Club convergence with
Molly and Dolly. The meet was postponed 
A few times until everything was set.
Damian and Dolly knew one another...

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I don't think it's just me.
I find myself challenged to change LeftBrain cognitive beliefs,
languaged abstractions of personal feelings,
perhaps because it is not possible to change Right Brain's
Elder feelings of co-passionate trust
where dipolar co-arising positive pleasure
is...

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It's all frustratingly LeftBrain relativistic,
even nihilistic in its darker 
ruminating 
paranoid about chaotic outcomes form,
said Einstein's post-millennial ghost.

So its all synergetic fractal 4D equivalent SpaceTime,
said Fuller,
in co-arising nondual P = N(NP)/2 (0)-Core response.

Interesting you should...

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When passion plants a multicultural seed,
then justice flourishes a polypathic trusting flower.

Permaculture and polyculture, 
grow holistic cause-effect karmic significance 
for our physical, and mental, political and spiritual health.

Permacultural, as I intend it this morning,
refers to...

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The Old Dark House

This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All...

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