Long Meets Poems

Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip...

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My protagonist today,
a Gay Black Religious Mature Male,
not quite ready for silver-grey Obama temples

Is off this morning
to a new full-time job,
8 to 5,
Monday through Friday.

He has been out of his calming,
regular custodial collared routine,
for over...

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Hi.
We don't have a lot of time,
or, well, I guess you do,
but I don't,
so let's plunge right into the first big question:
Which came first, form or function?

False dichotomy. No such thing as a totally dysfunctional...

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Why does dawn dress robust morning,
while dusk undresses sight?
Each dawn incarnates another Earth Day
a lifetime of Easter mornings 
redeeming nocturnal sight's revolution,
another therapeutic day of gift-it-forward light,
some longer,
some shorter 
before naked covered night.

Why life?
To uncover...

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Tell me,
Father Time,
if you would share this space
it would mean everything to me
to us, so kind,
which forms of integrative diversity
incarnate your highest priority,
most comprehensive,
social-political-economic-cultural issues:

1. Domestic economy flat-line trends,

2. International peace intent and praxis,

3. Universally...

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Fulfilled fantasies and legitimate realities…you do know how to please…
Are you listening to my voice of longing and yearning?
No, don’t backstab me with your broken promises…stop being a horrid tease…
Do not worry, Lord, I am...

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GILGAMESH . . .  

Story has it you used your power to run amuck
Putting fear into the people, and brides in Unuk

So the people of Unuk pray to the sky God Anu
To sort out...

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“ANTE BELLUM”


BEIGEBest served where it can’t be seen
On Stirling Silver platters
With redruM narcotics
Delivered by sharp Blood-Red
Well-mannered talons
Strutting in sleek wet rolling tight-skirted
Long French Silk Stockinged legs all the way down to 
Lethal Six Inch stilettos...

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I am sick of excuses to avoid responsibility
and I am, today, sick with excuses to avoid responsibility
with "I'm just a mortal human. I make mistakes.
I judge situations and relationships,
assess potential risks to care and nourishing...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems IV
I wrote this around age 17.



Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.

I read the Bible from cover to cover at age eleven, ten chapters per day, at the suggestion...

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Dream-worker 
delves deeply into my dream;

vibrations fondle anticipation
foreplay wakes wide-eyed 
swells of liquid libido quake the rendezvous edge -
a primordial being in his prime
a masculine ego quest for affaire d’amour;
her night-loving body 
c h a...

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I question my own interplay of psychology and political science.
Does this too facilely root analogy within ecology of climate health v pathology?

Intersections of sociology and psychology are at least academically commonplace.
I have a friend with...

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What evidence do we have that businesses receive financial as well as other nutritionally healthy benefits, 
by co-investing cooperatively within health-developing community cultures?

What are financially healthy benefits for cultural communities 
both internal to corporate identity,...

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"Cocoon"

They say...
a New World 
traces over the old,
leaving the unaware,
erased, far behind 

the old unaware, 
left far behind,
crawls the walls
in its web of lies
spinning suspect 
strings of silk 
in the air

glistening diamond nets
slick and sticky...

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To receive care
that best meets your needs,
and also,
by the way,
everyone else's too,
we look first
to where and when we have given such care
since our original longest reborn journey
down Mom's birth canal,
prepared just in time for our...

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(Continuing the trip through Hell of Dante with poet Virgilio)

Pah-peh Sah-tan, Pah-peh Sah-tan al-ept!”,
Started Pluto with his hoarse voice toss
And that gentle wise, who any knowledge kept,

Told to encourage me: “don’t have a loss 
By...

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When my life has finally left me and my last breath has been shed
And the silver cord is broken and my bodies firmly dead
I shall hover near the body, download the scenes of this past...

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genius?
sometimes you are in its minimal spotted light...sometimes!
other times you just know you've been touched and you freeze,
moved but frozen...like a stranger it moves in, does its work and leaves.

...maybe it's been a while since...

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Thus it begins—
A free-verse epic
Into the mind of
A writer and an idiot—
A romantic and, 
Often a pessimist
Conjoined in arbitrary glory
Are the thoughts and words 
Of one overly-worked mind—
Charismatic and, of course,
On the pushover, pitiful
And usually...

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"...making this shift [from ego to Authentic ecoSelf] usually requires inspired [inductive Right to Left +health-reiterative messages] intention and consistent, diligent effort [and a supportive vocational and residential and eco-logically balanced environment.]"

"And the way this...

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Of new pains new verses must be composed 
To give matter for the canto twenty
Of the canticle first, treating sunk posed.

I just was inclined with desires many
To thoroughly look at the open deep,
Which was moisten...

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"Barefoot in the Bushfires of the Vanities"



Heat rises slowly to rapture flames licking and teasing
Blue Ghostgums to stretch and crack wide open
as Fire spreads molten sweet sap bleeding burgundy all over 
amber gold wild bush...

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In these United States of America, there is a little town not very far off the beaten path. Neither gold nor silver has ever been mined in or near this town of fertile delta soil....

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Worth Two in a Buddha Universal Bush

Our permaculturist agenda,
primal principle of economic/ecological design,
is developing,
spreading,
hunting and stealing into fissures
fractally fracturing Business As Usual,
competitive monomials unveil Transitional Dual-Destiny of Time.

Nothing any one person or nation could do
or...

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The Spaniel

A Spaniel that uses its head 
Can tell when its owner’s unfed 
So instead of a duck
That is down on its luck 
Will deliver a pizza instead
 
The Afghan Hound

The Afghan’s a dog groomer’s...

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