Long Motes Poems

See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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Poems about Things that Break II
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter.
 
 
 
Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch
 
You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower...

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Red light, the neon beer sign on the distant wall reflects off the long expanse of polished bar top, overpowering the quiet brown wood. It’s after lunch, only a few people in to stir the...

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Pellucid pachyderms wade across
the purpling River Manjees
and Tozzath watches from the bank, 
the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud,
his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias,
whose lacey petals flutter
like the wings of long-dead...

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Rest now
O restless heart
released in ebb   to flow

ride the other side of the king tide rising
buoyant your movement in rise with the waves
Rise! to beyond where breakers break long-suffering shores
pitiless the grind of...

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Cypress trees like evergreen steeples
rise above rows of gravestone woes,
their shadows lie side by side like railroad ties 
across writhing paths banded like snakes;
the gravel birth cords sinuous 
sensing the ground   seeking the...

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(With Wormwood Dreams)
The fire and ice, heaven and hell equinox calibration of scales, scorched Earth
beneath a sky of epic fail of primary colors in triple beam, sale, cine-scene-
totem of hierarchial Archangels of Destruction of Kingdom...

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She crossed a wide ocean, during war times, in danger
A life of adventure, of courage, of fear
Yet, nothing reveals the hint of the years
that have chiseled her wrinkles, but not dampened her cheer

She pours me...

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Bilal ibn Rabah (580–640 AD) also known as Bilal ibn Riyah, and ibn Rabah), was one of the most trusted and loyal Sahabah (companions) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He was born in Mecca and...

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15 years old.
It was a brain tumor, they’d said.

Holding past the current;
undertow of reality slapping
my fragility cold –
(steel bars won’t hold water –
movement always finds its way)

O’, how the lies twist!

Twist like the dusty branches
on...

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Speak to me in iambic pentameter
and weave Shakespeare sonnets with Milton anecdotes.
Read me riddles and rhymes divulged 
over uneaten dinners and swing-sets with broken chains.
Allow me to lip-synch to your ballad of broken piano-fingers
and I...

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Invitations to the Gala
issued by a grave impala
were highly sought out missives 
by the bold and the submissive 
Those omitted uttered curses
shook angry fists or heavy purses
Had they but known that
the price of  admission
was...

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Each time has a special place
And every such place has its time.
When nature seethes with strangeness
Where the mind in exquisite isolation halts itself and listens
For the rumblings of a something large and not easily defined...

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When is a house, not a house
but a home, a place to call your own 
a box to fill with treasures 
of heart and objets D’ art.

Who built this wonderful place 
who would bleed, sweat...

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 Continued from Part 1 

3. TEATIME INTROSPECTION
Amongst the many are the few
who maim and kill and think it’s true
that purple war’s a parlour game
when really they’re submerged in shame
for crimes for which they are...

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A girl was walking through the night
Afraid and all alone
She sunk for moments of respite
Upon a blackened stone.

What flakes were these that sparkled bright
And flurried in the breeze?
What specks of gold did grace the night
And...

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Most of my classes suck (by that I mean they’re difficult). English is ok - especially the writing. I’d never want to major in English Literature though. It’s one of the hardest majors at Yale....

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"Eternity is the simultaneous whole, seen all at once. This is the character of eternity, and this what the past and future are in God." - Augustine of Hippo

"Eternity is not the hereafter. This is...

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She is shadowed by fuzzy cobwebs of a morning without coffee,
while dust motes mingle with the mold of time.
Gazing out to the yard, through dingy glass, and fog, 
into a dismal January, she hopes to...

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I Don’t Know What To Say To Katie Clemens
By Steve Body
Copyright 2009


I don’t know what to say to Katie Clemens.
All the words are jumbled in my head.
They all seem small and empty when I think...

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Neath shimmered strings of starlight’s breeze, crepuscular in night
on trodden soil he lay with slumbered eyes.
Lashed to oak, his chestnut mare in dream just out of sight
snaps free as lightning flashes; flares the skies.

Bounds to...

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Through tinted glass, I see cars have lined up outside, like a java-thirsty snake who waits to strike at the employee working the drive-through window.
I take a last dreg of coffee, then vacate the table...

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that will neither revolutionize whorled wide web,
   nor pollinate like fecund human loam
viz - it mine neurological nuances here
   within Schwenksville, Pennsylvania,

   my present home,
town pulsating with
  ...

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The old screen door still welcomes me, a familiar song I've heard before..
But oddly now, it's out of tune, a strange new wail of some despair
After this,...who'll pass this way?
Will they use the rug and...

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From a derelict house, near the interstate pass,
with her cuff of chenille, she rubs a small circle 
to clear away grime from the cold window glass
Better to see now, beyond wooden rails, that have worn...

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