Long Laughs Poems

On an early morning just before school
My tummy is churning my head hurts too
My feet are cold my forehead is hot
I have a runny nose and a tongue with blue dots

“Mom come quick!” I helplessly...

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She looked at him concerned
"Oh my God, we forgot the buns!"
A barbeque happening
Guests arriving
Coals flaming
Food prepared
But nothing to put burgers on
For their housewarming

Hasty instructions and some cash
From his Lover and her roomies
Then he starts to...

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See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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“The True Mother”

What part of a heart
in another could one trust
when betrayal comes
like a silver bullet, words and deeds
sharp piercing to burrow 
bleed out Life’s dreams 
rust crumbles to dust

Virulent apathy spreads 
Betrayal’s destruction 
hand...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems X

These are early poems written in my teens and twenties.

Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret,
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once...

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Here and Hereafter
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.



Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.

Because death...

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I listened to his heart profusely, 
For a beat like his was much to ponder
I often wondered, his thoughts, and,
A light in me knew, with wretched wonderment
What the whispers in his mutterings meant to me

They...

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Sonnets XVII-XXIV

Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten...

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Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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"Dream 1: 4 Weeks in Positano"



Kisses long linger warm lips tasted intense
so sweet like cured Valencia Oranges
lips liquored triple sec not dry drunk on love
softly grazed, then held long

slow, deep, warm and wet

The story is...

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“Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and...

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Translation of the Elegy: On Marceline Desbordes-Valmore - À L'amour - Poem by Marcel Moreau Translated by T. Wignesan

Reprends de ce bouquet les trompeuses couleurs,      (Take back the dubious colours...

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The three little pigs came to the ball
Tried to blow the castle down
It didn’t work
It was made of solid gold
So they gave up and sat at their trough 
Ate noisily 
And snorted quite a lot

They...

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NOTE:  This is the 2nd THIRD of a funny 3-part piece. No other way to post it due to file size limitations. It's a really fun poem, and I hope you'll take the time...

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The Philistine troops gathered up for war,
Between Azekah and Socoh amassed.
Israel encamped near in Elah vale
And drew a line against the number vast.
There Saul, upon one mountain, made a stand,
To face the other tribe across...

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Here's the scoop, friends...
   This is, as indicated, the 1st THIRD of this fairly lengthy poem. The 2nd and 3rd parts had to be posted separately due to Poetry Soup's file-size limitations. No...

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I have a lot to write and say, buddy, so hear me out some more
Don’t make me feel lower than I have ever felt before…
Listen, understand and stay quiet until I say no more…sorry if...

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Life is like that extent 
     Live that moment 
                   to full extent...

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alarm goes off*
I sit straight up startled and scared
Just my alarm, I hit the button
Get up and go to the bathroom
I brush my teeth with my toothbrush
Scratchy, painful bristles
Toothpaste that makes me sick
With the strong...

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I fall down
deeper and deeper
into oblivion
nothing
only darkness.
the sounds of evil
dripping into my ears
slithering farther
and sliding down into me
filling me with echoes.
terror courses through
my veins
into each cell
turning them against
me
they are no longer mine
they follow another
a stronger...

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“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
–“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” by W.B. Yeats 

“I love you...

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NOTE: This is the final THIRD of a funny 3-part poem. You'll find the 1st and 2nd parts on my homepage, of course. I hope you'll take the time to read the whole thing, it's...

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WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

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It's weird
and sometimes wild
living with a non-LeftBrain verbal dominant
aspiring child,
now young adult

I find myself waiting for him
to nonverbally connect
and correct me
about my patriarchal domineering
economic and political ableist sins
of felt omission from commercial value
and, perhaps worse,
my...

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Selena...Sarah the Sorceress
Russell...the Ghost of Never-land
This year has not been mine
Death laughs at me as he steals my grandfather from me
while I plead emptily for him to take me instead
yet I fail to realize I'm...

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