Long Mysteries Poems

"Oak" 

The guardians
stood around and 
shook their heads

great thoughts 
quivering 
from the ground, roots up, 

as if to walk 
confidently 
with great armies

yet hesitation 
was witnessed
in their waving gestures

perplexed 
and touching 
green crowns, 

there they...

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Epigrams by Michael R. Burch

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity 
are the whole of it.
—Michael R. Burch

To write an epigram, cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
—Michael R. Burch

Conformists of a feather
flock together.
—Michael...

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"Peace in the Nowhere"

Ghosts remain in this place
they read their words 
marked each day on walls
like prayers, it gives them
peace in the nowhere

someplace relevant to go

Ghosts commune in this place
disowned long ago or walked
off the...

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Here and Hereafter
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.



Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.

Because death...

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ALBERT EINSTEIN POEMS

These are "poems" I created from Albert Einstein quotes, changing a word here and there for the sake of meter and rhyme...



A question that sometimes drives me hazy: 
am I or are the...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers IV



Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is your concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm...

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Healthy nutrition research
starts with wealth producing past searches,
individual through community co-investments
in good and fragrant meals,
or even harmonic and graceful music with dance performances.

Ingesting healthy passions 
consumes PositivEnergy wealth
for future co-productive system projections.

My evidence for future...

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MODERN SONNETS I

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.


Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem...

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Poems about Children V

Pan
by Michael R. Burch

Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves

Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles

where we cannot return,...

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Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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Numbers, numerals,
like words,
combinations of letters,
mean something,
sometimes more secular,
sometimes more sacred ecological.

Numerals and letters share sacred iconic human-intelligence root systems
within a bicameral ecology of mind-body nonduality,
both RightBrain matriarchal empowering flow of integrity (Czikszentmihalyi)
and LeftBrain patriarchal Yang...

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(In a Lush Garden Somewhere Out There)

The student stands where shifting sands of thought,
Once firm with reason, now elusive truths are sought.
Its splendor wanes, a threadbare, fading strand,
A quest for wisdom, in this digital land.

Sage:...

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The Song of Amergin: Modern English Translations

The Song of Amergin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am the sea breeze
I am the ocean wave
I am the surf's thunder
I am the stag of the seven tines
I am...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand...

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Prose Poems

Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost?lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is...

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Identity Apples

iam a fat skeleton, resurrecting 
from the sad memories of dada 
and dark mysteries of aminism 
iam buganda 
i bleed hope 
i drip the honey of fortune 
makerere, think tank of africa 
i dance...

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LOVE POEMS II

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch: original poems and translations about passion, desire, lust, sex, dating and marriage. On an amusing note, my steamy Baudelaire translations have become popular with the...

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Something strange

and unexplainable comes this way,
this way, it comes to us sly and fast, 
some say, perhaps, 
it has already arrived, 
it walks unseen, in the midst of all, of us 

we go about our...

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In the dark of night a wind took hold,
With powers charged to shake the sky,
By moody swings of gods up high,
Their breath alone enraged and bold.

In the dark of night history spoke,
Of a world alive...

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Toddlers' Exploration: 

Cardboard drum, a thunderous beast,
Playful roars in tiny fists and feasts.
Fleeting wings glide, dreams just out of reach,
Soaring through tales of barnyard Waddles and Squeaks,
Moo! Quack! Giggles tumble and bump.
Flaps flapping, bright colors...

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Know Thyself
(one of the two Delphic commands of Apollo)



For years before the narrow windows of my senses
                  ...

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(Remembering Innocence)


Note to Readers of Previous Versions:
There are so many new vignettes scattered throughout the poem that I hope you will reread the whole thing! There are new tales, improvements to previous verses, and improved...

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   Symbols cry in dry ice theater -
the expanse of aesthetic visa-
drawn-
from the romance of the silvery eye -
as it golden advances the lid of covenance 
in dynamic enzyme.
Open faced type interpreted-
interpreter-embossed embol-
in...

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For years before the narrow windows of my senses
                          ...

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This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on...

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