Long Ladder Poems

“Forever”



When The Terrors came,
The Uncontrollable Ones,
she closed her eyes
and listened for the notes
her mother had planted
amongst the deep blues,
beds of Forget-Me-Nots,
she followed the 
labyrinthine trail 
and through a gate unhinged,
it would seem destroyed, thrown aside,
she...

Read More

Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

Read More

Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

Read More

Numbers, numerals,
like words,
combinations of letters,
mean something,
sometimes more secular,
sometimes more sacred ecological.

Numerals and letters share sacred iconic human-intelligence root systems
within a bicameral ecology of mind-body nonduality,
both RightBrain matriarchal empowering flow of integrity (Czikszentmihalyi)
and LeftBrain patriarchal Yang...

Read More

"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

Read More

How dare you desecrate the Capitol with urine and feces!
Even filthy pigs refuse to defecate near their own dwelling place.
How dare you flaunt confederate flags, grim reminders of our bloody history, 
Alongside swastikas, hate symbols...

Read More

[This poem 'No God Of  Mine' was seemingly confounding readers as
to its meaning. Ordinarily, if I felt a poem wasn't  cutting it, I'd delete
it, but on this occasion, I've been asked to explain it... so here goes.]


By...

Read More

“Sophisticated lady” gropes the table at her bedside, blindly taking random swipes to kill the morning scream 
That shatters little privacies she shares with no one else, and steals, with full impunity, her one recurring...

Read More

When I was a child in Los Angeles, you could size up groups approaching by watching their movements.

I remember this gang of older kids approaching me, watching them carefully while looking down to see if...

Read More

“Sophisticated lady” gropes the table at her bedside, blindly taking random swipes to kill the morning scream 
That shatters little privacies she shares with no one else, and steals, with full impunity, her one recurring...

Read More

Unidentified extraterrestrial(s) willingly abducted me

As a divergence 
from the apocalyptical, dialectical, 
geomorphological, judgmatical, 
metaphorical, philosophical...,
I share an out of this 
(webbed wide) world,
light hearted anecdote 
ye may find far fetched.

Believe me you,
an unspecified number of...

Read More

Nowhere Man

Star dust, the stuff of a fool’s dreams.
Oh !!!, to travel upon star dust streams
- that glorious, never ending journey -
into the realms, the space of many.

This old spirit, seems, not to fit into...

Read More

With these lines I’ll relate an intriguing tale of dubious accuracy
For I Hope to unveil sordid affairs of more than one conspiracy!
Be warned, that though you might be disturbed by the facts I relate?
They are...

Read More

0


[ edit ]
pentopaper41
67 followers     59 following     664 
Message   Follow
I am a mom, an artist, and an office monkey.
 

14 contests • 2 lists • 1...

Read More

We have come to you
Like the sun to the cloud does
Anything you can afford
Please,do,spare us.
We've been under this bridge
even the ants gossips us
Because we share the same meal.
We have come to you
President soldier,Pastor Navy
Money,nuts,fruit-
we'll appreciate!
We...

Read More

It is so hard to let go of love,
lovingly.

It sharks, 
unpeels more gut more quickly
than reel or reeler ever lost
in all those years of lazy inches
in and out:
casting,
winding in and playing out,
hardly fishing, rarely catching
anything
from...

Read More

Unidentified flying object abducted yours truly,... 

a willing experimental subject 
to escape untenable married life.

Upon falling into a deep slumber, 
the following subconscious 
somnambulant scenario arose 
allowing, enabling, and providing 
temporary alleviation from 
outa harried...

Read More

I was wiping the dust off an old snow globe in the upstairs attic, when a mop of honey-blonde hair suddenly appeared through the wooden flooring.
     "I thought I'd find you...

Read More

True love is unquestionable. 
What is true love?
To me; it is more feeling based rather than definitively worded. 
Emotional attached, formed mentalities that are equally paired with an immaculate physical connection. 
Collected bi-gender, shared love—
She’s...

Read More

In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A social worker had...

Read More

Nylon waste is often akin to a brushed out stable, manger, or stall. But brushing the carpet is often a resemblance of a swirling cloud of dust and tobacco shards and tobacco shards are not...

Read More

 I am a Son of an African American
I run
my turmoils taints the history books
yet people give me evil looks
I run
I choose
Yet I am 
Black and blue, this is my physical hurt

Been given a name...

Read More

Love

1.

I saw the bitter tears of unhappiness,
Running down your ravaged with pain
                       ...

Read More

From all worlds and time’s eternal outer reaches,
Where the Creator is perceived to dwell.
You try to learn what your told He teaches,
Regarding Life, the Universe, Heaven and Hell.

The soul is a precious, beautiful place,
Where you...

Read More

when I met you, I was dying. for the very first time in my life, but certainly not the last- you made sure of that
when I met you I was dying. I hadn’t eaten in...

Read More