Long Nests Poems

"Who Put Luebella down the Wych Elm?"

There are rumours
about me, some 
come seeking me
with their geiger counters
and ouji boards
with their heart 
shaped planchettes

unanswered questions
in the woods, crackling
within the sounds of leaves
invisible dead things speaking 
underfoot...

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For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight...

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The organic building of a coordinated artist
begins with reconstructing competitively clumsy LeftBrain technicians.

Whether learning to play the piano
or learning to communicate in some new language
or learning to adopt,
and/or adapt,
norms and nuances of some new cultural...

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If ever a moment in real life deserved a romantic, melancholy
backing track, it would have been that one ... we'd spent the
entire afternoon at Ferry Beach, sunning and playing frisbee, I
playing guitar, she practicing her...

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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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Juvenilia: Early Poems VIII

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school and college student. 

Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that...

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Always respect this combination of fire and wind,
she tentatively said,
after having listened for healthy and pathological winds
regenerating and degenerating,
investing in and divesting of,
yeasty flames of fertile dopamine.

They, like you,
co-arise of and from the landscapes
in which...

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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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HEROES

Near somber guards, units of children heap 
dead leaves, naive to any else fallen.
Friend, you chuckle, but your posture speaks
of duty on this day of contradictions.

Firefighters bow heads in silent paean, 
while polished trucks stand...

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Patience
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

If you refuse to speak, I will fill my heart with your silence and endure it.
I will remain still and wait like the night through its starry vigil
with...

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Most everything I learned about the history of evolution
feels colored by Julian Jaynes' theory of language
and culture
and history
and icons of ecological systems 
and co-relational functions,
forms and frequencies,
rhythms and ironic, ionic 
win/win polyvagal 
bilateral transparency.

This is...

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"Ground Level Entry"

“She fits the bill”,
they say it 
insouciantly

visions of being 
carried in the beak 
of a bilious pelican 

where it builds
its rudimentary nest, 
it uses sticks and debris

no stones, yet,
from irreverence
thrown at it

no higher...

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The Earth dry and bare; waiting eagerly for the drops of care;
 


Caught in the hot, steaming summer’s snare;
 


The flowers and creepers decorating window sills; all look desolate and ill;
 


As the nature withers...

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It is known throughout Earth's anonymous
unanimous Commons,
Systems are hard to change.

The more macro-competitive,
Yang-strong,
The more difficult of all conversion stories

Over pernicious decades,
We tend to add "isms"
to pathological ends
of these global systemic issues.

This polyculturalistic/multiculturalism suffix,
negative appendage,
suggests a...

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My transportive 
awesome Muse
speaks of a hiking trail
for an aging snail.

My communicative
wondrous music
is dancing choreography
for an ageless bee
coming.


I ask if I might speak
with the Editor in Chief
of my town's daily GoodNews Bulletin...

No.
I do not have...

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Words
The ship

Words come to me like spring. 
They set free, they shed the shroud, 
open with all their glory, beauty and sing. 
They stand tall, they ring out loud, 
from a life that blossoms with...

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“Barking Up the Wrong Tree” 

ghost gums
shed their bark 
the min-min 
makes good use of it
papyrus, soft enough to 
imprint and write
thoughts, like the 
ripening welts of 
green ants 
small bites sting
subcutaneous and 
meridional, 
terra...

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The sun, resplendent in its blazing might,
Burns fiercely o'er a barren, lifeless waste,
A desert dry and vast where earth is scorched
By searing radiation, deathly bright.
No sign of life but one lone phoenix flies,
Soaring precarious, close...

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Brazil

As I drove through the heavy snow of Manquiville,
Deep in silence back to Grandfather's house, all frightened faces
Full of solemnly dreams, I remember the smell of the sea.
	The unseen Grandpa's hands, pulling and pulling
	The full...

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Ginny didn’t know if it was a large pond or a small lake in the middle of the beautiful park where she had been hired right after high school to help with maintenance of the...

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When we encounter problems
in daily relationships,
as all species and individuals do,
from healthy time to wealthy RightBrain systemic rhyme,
practicing nutritional v toxic awareness
facilitates RealTime health preparedness
for what is not not causing power-stuckness challenges
to otherwise healthy nests...

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I once walked into my backyard
and found two slugs mating in a bucket
I had just learned how slugs go about mating, 
or trust-I would have been rightly confused

Here hangs a long line of slime, almost...

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Sunset

                                  ...

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Opa John

The caboose sits red—its iron spine cradles the earth like Atlas
rails stretching into nowhere. The stream murmurs softly
its voice threading through Ellie’s laughter like silver wire

"Do you see it?" I ask her my voice...

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They sit on their own
in their Hermit Kingdom
other side of the wall
singing their song 
entitled 
nothing to envy

peeling the skin 
away in generations 
it's worse than a famine
where colour 
is wrung 
from the inside out

emotive...

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