Long Nomad Poems

Oasis
by Michael R. Burch 
 
for Beth
 
I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.
 
I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,...

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I finally finished retiring four years ago,
a process that started in my mid-fifties
due to late adopting kids with special needs,
including needs for me to be home
to personally walk them on,
harness them in,
and wheel them back...

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I killed my friend,
I never wanted,
Do not see me cruel,
I did it for love.
We both ran naked
Under this influential shower.
No one uncoupled his lips
Against this faint madness,
We were indebted,
Either had to earn the prize.


It was...

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I order an audience, I command an audience
but it's a shallow demand
so all I ask is for just one
only one person come to me please
hear me out
erase my loneliness even if only for a brief...

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I can still feel your spirit crying out inside me
Everywhere I go I can feel you walking beside me
And a village of spies running around me
Something is really making me uneasy
No one is really bothering...

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The wails that disturb very few in their bed
Reach only the ears of the psychic… or dead

                  ...

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Sunday cockcrow nascent promulgate aural essays reveal,
laissez-faire luscious lustrous buoyant  raptures,
radio behemoth prompt to that untamed erudite fantasist,
me the one possessing rippled rampant penchant,
for titanic exploit extraordinaire beyond dimension heftiness,
 a stimulant patently innocuous...

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A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch
 
Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the...

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Five Words of Change 

There are words that make my toes curl, my skin crawl and the hair on my arms stand straight up like taking off a polyester sweater in winter crackling with static...

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Polly Astley loved to have visitors, for she loved piquant, plum people;
Like counting stars when we were young, in milky moonlight, peaceful.

Her days were spent teaching children, with faces perky as sunflowers,
When redbirds danced in...

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I’ve seen many look to the sky
and to the gods earnestly plead,
what sins have the committed that
require so many to bleed?
Why does Lord Diyal ride the lands,
do things that make your stomach churn,
his soldiers loot...

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Cracked beer bottles and detached baby rattles in slightly untidy, black plastic wrappers.
No garbage can nor box or bag is exempt from the burrower’s thorough ransack.
Rancid rubbish, rich with unwanted tidbits, 
And the bounty -...

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The very first time
my mother's healing touch
tapped my forehead,
I felt God's travelled down
here in this peculiar earth
to heal me up from the fever.
A sunken soul released out of me,
turned as rejuvenated as a fresh lemon...

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I was innocent, my heart was pure,
Until you stepped in, with your remarkable allure,
You influenced me, made me pine,
For things that weren’t mine
 
Gullible that I was, I thought with my heart,
Regardless of the plan...

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She came upon me in a dream deep down from within my destination

Which coursed the mind and soul of years for my memories' inspiration

The path was crowded with bouncing hooves and wagons decorated

With fantasies ornaments...

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Great transitions became part of human experience
after we gave up on daily nomad lifestyle,
perhaps too bohemian
to have ever actually existed
out of nutritional nurturing choice

As contrasted with necessity
of drought,
floods,
pestilence,
famine,
chronic wars,
climatic absence of healthy peace.

Great transitions
are choices,
positive...

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Breeze, storm, tempest, tornado, wind,
Typhoon, you are named, yes, whirlwind,
Yet, you have well compressed yourself;
In me, into a gasp, named breathe,
Without which I have a mere death,
Thus commanding terms on myself...

I could hear your voice...

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I had seen - her calm, cool, composed - like a soft soothing breeze,
Though she could turn tempest or tornado or weakly wheeze;
Like a formless cherub in an endless garden of love,
She covered the earth...

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The things I've been, the things I have been, the things I am, things I'm to be,
a symbol so dark, a sign so brite, a mark of the heart,
shadow of the soul,
rind of mind,
as the...

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Mary Lou Sims was young and enterprising, like stars routing dark;
Or mauve dawn on the verge of discovery, awaiting time's remarks.

Mary Lou's best friend was Cora Mann, ever since sweet childhood;
When they'd sat in zesty...

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TS Eliot said, “Paris is a strong stimulant.”
It is - but it has nothing on Manhattan.
If Paris is a Café Crème espresso at a café-en-terrasse under the stars.
Manhattan is a ‘Black Tie Bawls’ cocktail at...

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You've stumbled off the righteous path, into the hushed
Wilderness of the unknown, beware for salvation's sake,
Go back nomad; travel not these paths of no return.
But nay this is the domain of the shades, little is
The...

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IN A NOWHERE LAND

I feel like a crazy, mad woman,
chafed and losing my patience.
Feeling so bad, ready to explode
or needing desperately to explore
and get lost to point of no return
or to find a nowhere land.

The...

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...Have you ever seen true madness
take full possession of a man?
Gobayth’s dreams of coming home
were now all well and truly damned.
It’s said he screamed for half the night,
so much that it damaged his throat,
and it...

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The truth is that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car,
Between the place I have just left and the unknown destination.
My happiness is unbound only when traveling; when I arrive, anywhere,
It...

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