Long Monk Poems

Long in the tooth male doth recount, reflect, reimagine...
his woebegone damn dental daze today May 5th, 2021 

No particular rhyme nor reason
garden variety indentured flunky (me)
revisits his salmagundi salad days, 
when oral blight smote 
left...

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Prelude

After banishing my foe off to hell
The Lord took pity on my soul 
And returned it to my undead shell
Again, I was alive and whole

But the consequences of a second chance
Meant that I would have...

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AN ILL-FATED ADDRESS

Being on holiday in Athens was truly the best 21st present 
my parents could have given me, stayed with my granddad,
felt great, I traveled on my own, no more an adolescent.
Sad that I...

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New Year's Eve 2022

Yours truly riddled with social anxiety,
hence (billy me) he will idle away
December 31st, 2022 
sequestered (with the missus) 
hunkered down in his mancave
while madding crowd  
entertains reckons partition of time 
into...

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Matsuo Basho New Haiku Translations

Air ballet:
twin butterflies, twice white,
meet, match & mate
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Denied transformation
into a butterfly,
autumn worsens for the worm
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Dusk-gliding...

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Christ!
A warparty of 60 Shoshone warriors has just stampeded into the meadow
faces painted red and white for blood and death, all sorts of strange designs,
bows and arrows ready to fly on us, skull breaking cudgels...

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Incomplete metamorphosis of distilled adolescent...

therefore he characterizes himself as an anomaly...any idea why?

Mortified, petrified, stultified, et cetera sheltered, 
and mortally wounded prepubescent,

I consider myself
analogously buttressed, cocooned,
garrisoned (for bing keeler), 
hardened, insulated,
where cell baited jumping frog
o'...

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Neither a fable, 
Nor a tale, 
This is a fact,
A story to tell,
To everyone, female and male.
To generations, younger and frail.

About a threat, a monster from the East,
That struck the world like a beast,
Attacked Europe...

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New Year's Eve 2021

December thirty first
two thousand twenty one countdown
will transparently and seamlessly stream into
simultaneously linkedin January first
two thousand and twenty two,
whereby the Ball a geodesic sphere,
12 feet in diameter,
and weighing 11,875 pounds.

The aforementioned Ball...

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(DEDICATED THIS WRITINGS TO THE BIRTHDAY OF SHEIKH HASINA, HONORABLE PRIME MINISTER OF BANGLADESH)

Today is propitious day of Bangladesh
Happy Birthday to You O Great Leader Of Bangla
Sheikh Hasina (Prime Minister of Bangladesh)

In the heart of...

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Again Brother Paul said that “I didn’t owe them anything, but to do someone a good turn one day.”I shook his hand and thanked him for everything that he had done, He said “God be...

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I told him who I was and explained my predicament and asked would it be possible to use their phone to get help, he said”  unfortunately we do not have a telephone.”Strange I thought,...

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My name is Tom Cunningham, I’m retired now but thirty six years ago I had a very strange experience that I have never mentioned to anyone until now.
It was November the seventh, nineteen eighty six,...

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Ech day me cometh tydinges thre
"Each Day Three Tidings Come to Me"
(anonymous Middle English poem, circa the 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each day I’m plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my...

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Eric’s revitalised me and my home 
Over his body my fingers would roam
He’s great at fixing and gluing
Expert at banging and screwing
I’m so happy that I sparkle like chrome

All my friends are pretty jealous of...

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This self-explanatory English poem of mine was originally drafted Monday (evening) August 5, 2013, while I was still in Independence, Missouri. I revised it a bit in November and December of 2014, while “traveling” in...

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I was noticing that those in the Unitarian Universalist Association,
with which I am more or less anonymously affiliated
in some far too abstract way for personal comfort,
believe in three prime sources for their (our) truth search,
rather...

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"The Shattering Silence of Falling Leaves"




In Theta waves 
tumbling to 
The Land of Dark Dreams
Trees will capture and save
the falling Princess and Queen
An Bee Cailleach
invisibilia simulacra viro
An Bee Cailleach scries heroes 
incarnate falling in 
The...

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Marching out of the cloaked shires
Of landowners, stockbrokers, 
Hereditary Peers, and ruddy faced 
Squires:
A vast multitude of many varied 
Tribes.
Amassing in the great cities, where,
Inhabiting shadowy chambers, 
Behind nodding sighs and hushed 
Whispers, 
The Masonic...

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Cherry Tree Music Co-op

alternately titled instant infatuation: 
a moment of spontaneous spunk
instantaneously transformed 
ordinarily shy guy into a quidnunc
courtesy powder milk biscuits
inside his mouth 
bitesize morsels did plunk
wafted courtesy pheromones 
found him punchdrunk
reclusive tendencies bubbled...

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“Fire burning in a hill
The lines are rocky rough
Red angels wait to pick remains
The cindered shoulder
Of confused men” 
(Peter Murphy)
 





"On the Cindered Shoulders of Confused Men"



Close your eyes it was all just a bad...

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"Just live a little, Hawaiian style!" Quote by Hawaiian Style Band.

On the first day of Christmas, my tutu gave to me,
-- (and...) a-*Ne-ne-Goose-un-der-a-gua-va-tree.
(guava fruits are the best part of their diet--trust me)

On the second day...

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  On white lines on valiant wheels
I head north leaving behind the City of Sails
       with its humourless streets,
    its casino steel and glass Sky...

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“50 Words for Poe: Azrael”



What alchemy to lure Azrael
who hidden until now
keeps his vigil 
in the still sound of 
the shattering silence 
of falling leaves
under the elms in the 
hollows of 
Hanging Hill 
with the...

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ZEN DEATH HAIKU XII

These are my modern English translations of Japanese Zen Death Haiku. 

Both victor and vanquished are dewdrops:
flashes of light
briefly illuminating the void.
—Ouchi Yoaka, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael...

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