Long Laundromat Poems

YOU ARRIVED ON CUE I SUPPOSE RIGHT AFTER THE CHRISTMAS DAY ARSONS MURDERS PROCLAIMING MY LIFE WAS IN GRAVE DANGER WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ARSON MURDER 8 ELDERLY PERSONS PARISHES PROCLAIMED MY EX HUSBAND...

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Daylight dies
Blackout the sky
Does anyone care
Is anyone there 
Enjoy this life 
Pop open a Sprite 
Roll over to the right and kiss my wife 
She's fast asleep
Daylight is trynna come 
It's trynna creep 
When she...

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Like a beacon on a hill
The white church steeple gleaming still
For all the many years gone past
It marks the path for home at last

Up and down each tree-lined street
Where childhood friends and neighbors meet
In history...

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Bittersweet pyrrhic victory...

if a 2024 November presidential Biden win
pandemonium likely to occur, 
subsequently figurative tectonic upheaval  
might set United States in a tailspin.

Though discouraged, disenchanted,
disheartened, et cetera Democrat,
I intend to exercise enfranchisement
wherein human made...

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Banana Bread Yum!


Spring was in the air sooo thick that you could cut it with a knife!
As to the Laundromat I went with Dragon at my always, dutiful side.
The sun was shining with all its...

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It starts with just one,
Just a small one,
A delicate pinkish shooting star
Chosen painstakingly from the flash on the wall
While a girl with blue hair and a nose ring
Watches disdainfully from behind the counter.

It takes more...

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SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER

Do the ones that held an angel baby girl, 
Know that she has come unjumbled?
A beautiful cherub face framed with auburn hair
Her eyes so bright they could see the hope,
Of a thousand unlived dreams...

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And so, the homeless have a stake
somehow, the Lord of angels states
to do it unto me ~ my sake
offensiveness I can remake!

A tone, a gesture of impede
a beating by a Mayor's heed
"out of my town",...

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Ambiguity within mine
doodling Yankee mind that
arises, asper current
hoopla harrumphing
American Civil War statues,
which verbal/written spat

particularly regarding southern generals
(many atop horses) arouses
call to arms whereat,
excited curiosity possibly twill incite
dangerous extraneous, mutinous,
treasonous tit for tat

promulgation exhuming ghosts
abolitionists of...

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What compares to the present?
The present is like a needle
Time threading through its eye
A needle on a phonograph
My record is now on the B side
Still, I can't listen to the present

The future is encrypted
A symphony...

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On a dry, summer day,
ridin’ back from the Laundromat with Reneé,
she’s got words in her mouth
that she’ll choke on if they don’t come out:
“Something died when you came west –
your malcontent, your empty threats
had me...

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Here's the story of Hansel and Gretel
But, again, not like they said
Their's was way too humdrum
So, here's my version, instead

First, their father wasn't a woodcutter
He worked at the laundromat
He took quarters from the scrub boards
To...

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It wasn't my choice to spend that Sunday

Washing clothes at the nearest Laundromat.

My washer could not be fixed 'til Monday

My dirty clothes just could not wait for that.





No one else was there when I first...

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**For Ruben O, My little Bro**

(This poem was written and a recording made for the contest sponsored by Team Poetrysoup which was deleted before it was judged.  I wonder if this would have received...

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The silence, the almost endless joyful silence, 
That's what I remember most looking back, 
Silence and belonging, companionship, 
Not in Nature so much as part of it, 
Absolutely indispensible we were, 
As if God Himself,...

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A date with my Hubby is an amazing and a most wondrous thing…
It starts with the McDonald’s Dollar menu and then we grab and run, I say!
Then we’re off to the local Laundromat where the...

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Far from the throes with foes who dip acid,

but

still wiping flows from my nose, cooked by oil-based pros. The intensity grows, when it's mixed with White Whoes', and you come out yo' clothes, 'cause you're...

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You're rolling in the green right now,
lying naked on a bed of lettuce
Got those nubile maids milking the cash cow,
as you float on tequila dreams,
thinking it's gonna last forever
Money laundering machine
keeps churning out
counterfeit business window...

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Kirby's no Catholic, at least he doesn't believe 
the Pope's infallible. Infallibility's for me, 
the one he counts on for treats under the table 
when no one is looking, or he trails me into 
his...

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Hymn to an Art-o-matic Laundromat
by Michael R. Burch

after Richard Thomas Moore’s “Hymn to an Automatic Washer”

O, terrible-immaculate
ALL-cleansing godly Laundromat,
where cleanliness is next to Art
—a bright Kinkade (bought at K-Mart),
a Persian rug (made in Taiwan),
a Royal...

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Oh hi me hence to the laundromat 
Bearing many a malodorous sock
As ofttimes a shepherd will boldly go
To the babbling brook where the clear waters flow
With a line of the wooliest beasties in tow
(Or sometimes...

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so i asked the lad
he was at work with his mother
she manages a laundromat
where one may only need machines
but there is a service of clean and fold
for us single elderly gentlemen
what is your favorite candy...

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The Dead Word Pile

My fault, sorry, the writing’s on the wall.
Awesome, pretty, don’t matter none at all.
The words just have to join the pile
Where all dead words will go.
Their time is up, it’s over, done
No...

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Home from a chemo session, uncle lights up
a cigarette and collapses
to the slick plastic that covers your chaise
lounge, auntie. He thumps the upholstery
with his legs and elbows for blood
to circulate again. A flake

drifts. Dehydrated lips,...

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Hooray it’s laundry day
A perfectly lazy day
Where all I need do
Is get up once in a while
For quick transfers
Just a flick of a button
And wait for the magic to unfold

I have it so easy –...

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