Long Oiled Poems

Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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Rejection Slips 2

The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch
 
The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,
 
the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,

the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,
 
the face in the...

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Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!



Eternal Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm...

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Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me...

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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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“The Juniper Prize: Between the Known and the Unknown”

That man built a house 
of straw and sticks
and the stories that burned within -

all consuming the titled prize;

like a bird 
sings a song
the metre repeats and...

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“The Splice of Life”



When colour 
was to be 
washed out
of the world 

the evil ones 
didn’t care

the Actor led 
with his 
Dementors 
either side of him

Laundry, 

they resolved 
to be the best 
pristine method 
for...

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February 27th, 2018 literary tinkering rejiggered October 11th, 2024

I believed fortune cookie maxim 
cryptic message couched
Apple Macbook Pro update process
alternately titled “markedly 
a Luke warm welcome Matt unfurled
courtesy Jimmy John,
who embarked on 
imp apostle bull...

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The Dance of Salome
Herod bellowed out the night's festive orders..
"Bring the torches, bring the tables..
more wine, that we may rejoice,  
for tonight we revel in kindred friendship."
Herod strolled onto the terrace, nearly stumbled in...

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Students conservative of body-health care
invest as necessary
in bowing and submitting subservience
to orthodox heterosexual vampirate mentors,
fundamentalist badnews evangelicals
sucking on pre-meditated rapture
of Heavenly bloodsucking EarthNatures.

To meet conservative RightWing
LeftBrain patriarchal 
student membership classroom requirements
of monoculturing monopolistic
indoor health-safety classrooms,
research...

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                             Brahman Nemesis

    ...

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Defecation accidentally clogged...

for the umpteenth time 
during spate to sit scrawny buttucks 
on porcelain throne id est 
videre licet toilet bowl...
with toxic water brew threatening
to overflow onto the floor,
and hence found yours truly (me)
immersing himself...

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My dreams were of the dire Queen
I had allowed her reign over me, callousing my heart,
She was inside me, laughing
Having crawled in
My walls closing, as she filled my soul
We were one, yes for a time,...

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Boob jobs and bomb jobs

Sisters in arms those tits and those weapons of massive 
destruction sex and death go together in dynamics
thermodynamics psychodynamics fused on the playground 
of this life of this poem on which...

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slang..
up-dogged = when you chip in to keep a conversation trend going
fit = gorgeous
buje = unexplainable glamor
football minute = a minute, that with time-outs, that lasts a half an hour.
crute = cute but cringy
women's-rights =...

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To this day, the breath labours on still 
Marrow birthing blood same as ever 
to keep this battered carriage oiled
The soul wills the flesh to hobble on 
and prays the spirit keeps aflame 
The game...

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MEMORIES OF WAR 


In prison we turmoiled 
packed up cards to fall 
whilst they sucked 
genitals like bonbons 
a quartz on a table
gleamed its knowing

War torn ghettos with 
swollen stomachs 
stretched wide, auras 
shattered, splintered...

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Community outdoor innovators
are challenged by premillennial lack
of potlatch cooperative investments
paid-forward
by ZeroZone invested WiseElders,

Limited by Space
for developing multifamily co-housing
with cooperative community organic gardens.

Limited by volunteer outdoor ego-eco therapeutic
Time.

Limited by competitive economic grid
and profile assumptions
for future WinLose...

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The Job

I got a plane to catch in the morning.  8:15 AM out of Austin, destination Orange County, CA.  Never cared much for California and I don’t think anything about this trip is...

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Please correct me if I do not accurately speak for you,
I would not misrepresent your fellow readers
and writers and breathers
and heart-beaters

but I believe outcomes,
goals we most want 
our local 
and national 
and international political networks
to...

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This year's Halloween edition....





"Pale Horse and the Yellow Submarines"



There approaches 
One

Light bringer
rides a dead pony

albino 
red eyed, no gun

or so 
the story goes

pale 
as death

hear its 
Netherworld neigh

beetles 
dig deep 

pigeons coo 
novocained

ignorant 
messages fixed

dull...

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"Motherland"

The “Removed”,
Charlestons across the keyboard,

fingers have a personality and a mind 
of their own, don’t you agree?

the stalwart mind converses with the frivolous fingers 
its stark increduality, considers All above All

they’re incorrigible, those lithe fingers,
like...

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Sometimes,
not often enough,
I stop my morning routine
to watch the feeding drama breathe feathered flurries in and out,
on, 
and under,
my side-yard bird feeder

Outside my kitchen windows
over this morning's sudsy sink,
looking across a twinkling white field
of early...

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Those rarer men I once fondly 
knew...                            ...

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BREAKING THE SILENCE : NO MORE

Sponsored by Ink Empress 

Glass shattered a
Saturday afternoon tea ~

Silence holds steady
black fleeced momentum 
for its own ripping
when lightning as whipping 
fire from Heartbeat of
Sun slashes its Void
loudness to tumble...

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