Long Lightness Poems

“Come on, let's get introduced to my play mate in a palm.
Linda, these are Joshua’s true other selfs.” 
Lelia emitting a peculiar chuckle.
A comic situation arose where I changed my voice for each of my...

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Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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Once upon a weedy lawn
At Cedar Oaks Retirement Home
There sat my mother, weak and old
On an afghan knit to block the cold.

It was summer, but in mom's grey eyes
Was winter, when all around us dies.
I...

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Self destructive wickedness arrested, convicted, and gaoled...

with kidnapping little boy 
ordered to suffer
life sentence without parole.

The deadly scourge of  
one obsessive/compulsive disorder
nearly left me starving to death.

Anorexia nervosa absent bulimia 
nadir of onset 
diagnoses...

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For the past thirty seven years, living for me was knowing that I do not know
I have been yearning for what I do not have a name for
The knowledge of the presence of this nameless,...

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It spread its grizzly legs on the whitewashed wall
Firmly baked in the early summer heat 
Spitting perspiration dripping from the white crisps ceiling
While I cling onto a sensational feelings
Night has casted shadows upon night
With images...

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Traditional Solitaire potential combinations...

that clenched another win today
February 20th, 2024 
(eight hundred and ninety yesterdays ago 
since June 13th, 2021)
original crafting date of following poem,
when yours truly 
single handedly trumped computer, 
for umpteenth time,
which saw...

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Traditional Solitaire potential combinations...
that clenched another win (yahoo)
jimmied today August 15th, 2022 single handedly
just before the crack of dawn
with both hands tied behind my back,
and a blindfold worn over my eyes.

While in the midst of...

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Mine psyche riddled with dybbuk
Thru emerging adulthood awareness awoke
within noggin of average baby boomer bloke
catastrophization toward risk taking I evoke
positive growth experiences throughout vast
number of orbitz around sun never kickstarted,
nor linkedin with potential livingsocial folk,
thus...

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Traditional Solitaire potential combinations...
that clenched another win (today June 13th, 2021) single handedly

While in the midst of playing solitaire 
(with losing outcome foreordained 
after a couple moves), I became gripped 
with combinations predicated on thirteen...

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Mine psyche riddled with dybbuk

Thru emerging adulthood awareness awoke
within noggin of average baby boomer bloke
catastrophization toward risk taking I evoke
positive growth experiences throughout vast
number of orbitz around sun never kickstarted,
nor linkedin with potential livingsocial folk,
thus...

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Living With A Myth

How dares one to speak of disability and live with it to tell the story narrate 
               ...

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(His Version of Your Secret I’ll Never Tell)

You call me your love, such a sweet endearment from someone I used to know, a sentiment that I am undeserving of and rightfully so
The secret you’re referring...

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Mine psyche riddled with dybbuk - haint no joke

Thru emerging adulthood awareness awoke
within noggin of average baby boomer bloke
catastrophization toward risk taking I evoke
positive growth experiences throughout vast
number of orbitz around sun never kickstarted
nor linkedin...

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A funny thing happened this evening
My littlest daughter sat too far back on the toilet, slipped in and was stuck
(Have we all been there? I remember my experience well...)
She found it hilarious and shouted for...

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I stand proud with pride...

exuding suave debonair air 
plus head and shoulders taller
(than the empire state building -
hey what's a little hyperbole, eh?)
since September eleventh
two thousand and twenty four,
which date marked a major change
(yes folks...

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Written: April, 16, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Kai Michael Neumann

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From a deep weariness of the soul 
to the discomfort embedded in our bones. ...

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(His Version of Darkness and Lightness)

Oh, before you I never dreamed of venturing into the light, but you intrigued me with your celestial colors always shining out of your soul so bright 
I always knew...

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I aim to live in the here (ahem hair) and now...

despite entrenched familiar
obsessive compulsive disorder behavior
distracting me courtesy
countless what if scenarios,
particularly before undergoing
voluntary drastic makeover
as iterated in a previous poem,
and briefly recounted here
as foregoing Samson...

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"Another Better World"


These little sins 
you smoothly skip across the waters of fairweather lives 
like darkness hidden underneath deadly white lies,
like throwing pebbles casually across The Lake of Tears
that reflect rippling rings rapidly racing outwards...

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Filched formerly anatomical slender man - me! Thus I take a pot belly stance!

Absolute zero escape
velocity gutted dance
sing days (contra and square),
cuz metabolic full abundance
abdominal adipose tissue acceptance
not in accordance
with light as a feather
physique I...

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Part 01 - The Earth is Still

SURE and so satisfied to be here together again. Let the gardens carry on its song.
i stand around in the peace that comes from the smell of flowers so...

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Subtitled: A Quiz Sic Hull Emotionally Test Ting Senior Event
 
Valedictorian treads across makeshift platform 
   i.e. most likely auditorium stage
marked by pronounced hushed audience, 
   who exude a collective sigh...

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Happy 68th birthday MaryAnn Sage - revisited January 12th, 2021

Wherever you might be holed up
within this whirled wide web wassup?

Mein kampf still equals board
hardscrabble existence deplored
analogous to Norwegian bachelor,
whose Lake Wobegon nestled within fjord
forcing me...

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