Long Moldering Poems

the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no...

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Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here?among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes,...

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These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems ...



The Vision of the Overseer’s Right Hand
by Michael R. Burch

“Dust to dust ...”

I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color...

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February 29th, 2024

Alternately titled: 111th leap year since 1582
the year Pope Gregory XIII world leader
(i.e. essentially paterfamilias among
Roman Catholic flock)
timely maneuvered around calendrical rock
and hard space implementing
viable system tracking years ad hoc
out of sync and...

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CIVIL RIGHTS
Four Colored Girls
You whisper before dawn
The silence of visible light
Singing God's hymn infinitely in time.
Your words are a reflection of mourning
Not knowing foreshadowing history
We share your agony
We share your pain
A mirror image of your...

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In our Physics Departments
our most salient awareness
grows
of those nature-spirit entities
most easily seen
and heard
and smelled
as animated and animating,
sometimes more,
sometimes less,
in our daily ritualistic lives
of solids
and liquids
and gases
and plasma
and bilateral neural pathways
of interdependent communication.

In our MetaPhysics Department,
still...

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You’ve heard of the Flying Dutchman,
the ghost-ship that travels the seas,
there’s countless legends about it,
a great deal of variety.

Some say it’s just cursed to wander,
a result of some ancient sin,
a crew long dead yet still...

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(tongue in cheek
by this moldering geek.)

Thy marriage doth incurably ail,
even strangers would vouchsafe
     (with nary any cavil),
     and perhaps even avail
herself (sight unseen),
    ...

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I.
Sol stared down the empty trail before him,
looking to see what waited in the dim,
the Zander Ranch was the place from the note,
they’d written of evils born beyond hope.

So Sol approached atop his sturdy horse,
wondering...

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III.
There must be a hundred, silent and cruel,
a slow-moving wave as the night grew cool,
Rose had a shotgun, to blast out her hate,
yet Sol remained steady, motioned her to wait.

He didn’t shoot, he had planned...

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The taste of bile treads my thoughts,
Unwillingly my feet must now follow,
Source of inspiration guide,
Restore the signal fires now long lost,
Set beyond the temporal,
A path impassable by mortals,
The stairs of separation, 
I must recount lest...

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III.

Scott bought the farm and some dairy cows,
and set about building himself up.
He soon made a name for quality milk,
local wholesalers could not get enough!

One summer day he took to the plow,
preparing and old field...

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Open Letter to Thomas Jefferson

You sir, destination unknown, I dare
To address. A son of worthy causes  
For land vast in majesty and vast as
Vast can be in matters of liberty;
With ideals so prim and...

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February 29th, 2020
alternately titled: 207th leap year since 1582

the year Pope Gregory XIII world leader
(i.e. essentially paterfamilias among
Roman Catholic flock)
timely maneuvered around calendrical rock
and hard space implementing
viable system tracking years ad hoc

out of sync and...

Read More

alternately titled: 207th leap year since 1582

the year Pope Gregory XIII world leader
(i.e. essentially paterfamilias among
Roman Catholic flock)
timely maneuvered around calendrical rock
and hard space implementing
viable system tracking years ad hoc

out of sync and lock
step by...

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* There is one person I would bring back in a heartbeat, and that's my favorite human being of all-time, Walt Whitman - he literally changed my life with his poetry, and brought true beauty...

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Emotional sequestration perseverates
     across thine time warped
     weft wise wold,
sans interpersonal stagnation

     flourishes as oft twice told
tale a boat amidst derelict hollowed
 ...

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I’ve come back to the place where I had grown,
a place no more as it once was known.
Not a roof, not a room, not one wall left,
just an old, weathered chimney standing alone.

An ill-tempered wind...

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Draped in silent fog, is a reservoir of dreams
weathering each season, with a mystifying scheme  …
On a wind-swept shelf, she is silently sleeping 
Where secrets are guarded and are hers for the keeping
Looking out...

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Oh, My Dear Walter, how your words have slayed
          Humbled me, broken me, molded, remade

To taste of your world, see above or below it
  ...

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...A poem dedicated to a character named Koreen Mae Garson (a lady, not a man)... 

Your love smokes me like a worn-out cigarette

Your love blemishes me with bite marks

You brush aside the crumbs…now I’m stomped...

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the martyrs' dream remains unfulfilled,
we race toward immortality,
not having learned to live,
      searching for succinct sentiments,
      find only engineered impediments,
more to being than just becoming,
...

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In the mist, like a dream, she has weathered the seasons…
On the wind swept shelf, as if silently sleeping 
Where souls in her graveyard, are hers for the keeping
Staring out at the tide, where the...

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Musty boxes
Resting belligerently in forgotten corners
Gathering dust
Waiting to be dissected
Eviscerated
Purged of their jumbled bits and bobs
The oddments of a family of lives
Muscled arms heft them in a tanned sweaty embrace
A bumping scuffling journey ensues
The same...

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They paint the ground beneath the trees they served so well
Hues of red, orange, yellow and brown
All blended into an autumn camouflage
Laid down now in their final form of service

They lay moldering beneath their parent...

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