Long Lancing Poems

Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable...

Read More

Kentucky's late summer sunshine
sunk deep into their skin
as the boy rode on the back
of his Grandfather's coppered horse,
the tobacco harvest would begin soon,
aromas of sweet leaf darkness
were wafting in the field heat,
to the big barn...

Read More

Mahmoud Darwish English Translations of Arabic Poems



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of bread warming at dawn,
a woman haranguing men,
the poetry of Aeschylus,
love's...

Read More

The National Science Foundation outsources to Colleges, today's mental assassins to secretly 
censor you using "wisedex" 
among other things. 
"Wisedex" is
in the shadows of academia, 
a deep state melanoma
with digital mitochondria and an mRNA soul.

Mental...

Read More

Jessamyn's Song (circa age 14-16)
by Michael R. Burch

16
There are meadows heathered with thoughts of you,
where the honeysuckle winds
in fragrant, tangled vines
down to the water's edge.

Through the wind-bent grass
I watch time pass
slow with the dying day
on...

Read More

Five miles of neatly spaced suckered palm planted 
Bustling promenade,
Not withstanding a provincial cafe-culture 
Of restaurants and exciting little bars,
Enhance upon regal elegance of the crammed hotels
Regency period style facades;
Their fashionable shadows slowly lifting and...

Read More

Wake not to feel that all is maya  all futile all cyclic dust
           even if it were so the pain lingers   pain...

Read More

My head spins as the noise from the crash echoes in my head. I sit up in some kind of terminal with strange trains bound left and right for places I don’t understand. 

One is...

Read More

In the court of the Queen,
With her eyes to the ground,
Who is shrouded in darkness
And silence profound

With her skeletal hands,
Wrapped in gossamer skin,
Rest on smoothed out mahogany, 
And gleam through the dim.

There is nothing to...

Read More

Speak to me my muted heart
where went your rhyming ways
The voice of a hearts deepest hour  
in mysteries a soul explained

Is your rhythm lost or simply hiding
in the noise of life as it whines
expression...

Read More

Smoke drifts across the field,
explosions, distant and blurred.
Machine guns discharging rounds,
Scorpions launching slugs.
Flashes of fire, 
plasma blue, violet and emerald. 
Constant noise, deafeningly loud.

Longswords rocket above, 
Banshees screeching past,
Seraphs wheeling about. 
Carriers, 
their strange curves...

Read More

help me if you can, cuz salutary
     hans solo impossible missions
     fall short asper this mwm to break free,
     thus Siam game for...

Read More

creating a gathering
where spoken words sing
of a moment that will bring
about answers to everything
we've subconsciously been asking
when can we breathe instead if gasping
for an everlasting smile still dancing
in the soul of our innocent imagination lancing

the...

Read More

A vignette of domestic violence and the weird rationale of love amidst such 
circumstances - adapted from how it was depicted to me by a female friend and 
taken from her own personal experience.

I was...

Read More

The days are long and unproud, they brood...
  and please not the weary soul wearying in its wake;
  when gnashing snow and rain bite
  cold and bitter nights ---
  smite the...

Read More

Blanched Bones

We’ve not dreamt the crystal morn,
the tinkling ping of sun warmed ice,
the egg white branch of lilac dipped,
the magic of the wintry day 
which fills the heart with awe.
Such days of silver ice and...

Read More

I start out with no ideas at all. Then I begin to free type.
I type words that rhyme – bubble, double, trouble, he, me, knee.
The trick is to keep adding words even if they make...

Read More

On razor-edges, Chinese windchimes tinkle and peel,
eclectic charges skip, crackling and white,
from synapse to synapse.
Neck muscles then cord, piano wire strained,
arched spine, gruesome human bow, neither arrow nor target;
spittle-flecked lips morph shades of Arctic blue,
glacial,...

Read More

GAZA 2014

Which veil b
                locks o
    ur view  of the app
     ...

Read More

Don’t lance it everyone I know begins to sing. 
Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!  it’s not good idea!~
I lanced it myself last time, and they know it. 
They chant the same things as my sister the...

Read More

O Camelot! O Camelot!
The winds have changed, the land got hot!
Though dromedaries are quite neat,
A bactrian's hard to unseat,
And so the knights still joust a lot.

At banquet feasts, the men are found,
And like the table,...

Read More

“Love Achieves”

Ife my love a sea can touch
Where words and love cannot confess
The very shadows of the soul
Or find the rose of all desire
No flaw or flame thus to know
That time concedes upon the heart
The...

Read More

Smoke ladened vision
scratching at my eyes
    making them cough,
conversations drift
across the panorama
  of my hearing.
(the world needs more poets)

Words rattle, 
     separate conversations
    combining,
...

Read More

The blackberry, elderberry and strawberry congregated for a meeting
The blackberry had a thorny issue
The elderberry looked down on them
The strawberry had low self esteem
This is our lot, sharing this plot
The strawberry said with a low...

Read More

They were young...so very strong...
Off to war, for which some longed!
They didn't know, what they would see..
They'd be fighting memorie's...
Wanting only...to be free!
So often alone, on cold, dark night's,
Re-living the horror...Re-living the fight's!
While those at...

Read More