Long Lodgers Poems

Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me...

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     by how many badbyes can you measure the length of your day

                 first comes...

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Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

My era's obscuring mirror
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my...

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Hungry for munchies, on his way to the lunchroom, 
a rambunctious, persnickety,“fuss-budget”, elderly
jittery, fidgety, geezer, named Cassidy…
whose questionable dexterity, aghast by a massive sneeze,
teeter-tottered precariously. 
at the edge of the thingamajig, ...jigging one way, jagging...

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Mornings fade into evenings, evenings slip into nights.
Day colors spill from their pails, then seep into
valleys, wind caves and shale.

The Painted Desert bleeds into a Stygian hue
as the heat reaches up to embrace the moon
and...

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Your sullen muted whispers, 
wafting in this dank whiskey inn,
are falling on wide-open ears, except,
your mousey annoying voice lacerates my brain 
with claws that rip and tear and impale,
yet, I desire more of this, here
with...

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When you are rich you can do what you please
Building and naming stuff what you may.
So when Ford decided to build his own church
he named it Martha-Mary chapel one day

In 1923, he purchased 3,000 acres...

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My most favorite vacation ever was in Taiwan,
That was in October 2019, not in year 1991.
I’d humorous experience with my four friends,
On arrival day and travelling by bus and train.

The moment we arrived at the...

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Might this be a wonder,
Might this be a sunder,
Might this be the blocker,
Might this be the warder,
Might there be a plunder,
Might it pass the border,
Might there be a dweller,
Might they be lodgers,
Should they be squatters,
Should...

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Unhinged at last,
so fast,the flight of parsley
    colored parrots
atop the palace walls
      and halls
where falcons fall
  from azure skies
with cries
   still throbbing
in your throat.

...

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Incense hung in the evening air
like the mist and the chains of prayer cranes.
Ferocious gilded guardian framed the gate
through the aged arched travelers trooped
Pilgrims all.

Monks diminutive in form,
draped in square clothes 
of sacred orange, bow.
Prayer...

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When I was young, eight years at most,
I pedalled to Miss Weatherby's house...
down the street,
past salty old codgers
cheating at checkers,
past Dad's bakery,
around the bend to duck ponds with
silly-faced Buddha frogs
showing toothless grins,
past the poor shack-lodgers,
speeding...

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Coffin dodgers and nursing home lodgers,
wrinklies, pensioners and plain old codgers.
A drain on society, archaic models of piety,
bed blockers, youth knockers, paragons of sobriety.

But is all that we see, all that it seems,
the elderly, like...

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#10: No Room At The Inn

They blossomed they did like rows of roses.
Places for lodgers, those traveling sourced,
their reasons countered their changing poses,
frequent stays and returns have been endorsed.
There will be places that might be...

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The soul leaves its chamber,
It goes on a voyage,
An eternal mileage,
The body is in an endless slumber.

The soul travels on a lone road,
Free from the earth's load,
Dazzling lights are seen ahead,
Not all about the place...

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Lodger in my heart

I found rather strange people in my heart,
among those closest to me,
hiding and peking true white cels of my blood,
stiling all those red one!

Then I thought to myself,

What should I do to...

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