Long Orpheus Poems

Poems about Poems (II)

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss?
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves...

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State of the Art (III)

These are my "ars poetica" poems: the ones about the art and craft of writing poetry in a modern world that doesn't always recognize the artists or their work. 



Come Down
by...

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Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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Slang..
Chick-fil-a = the best place ever
jade = 
brooke = gorgeous 
mishin = the boss, as in “You aren’t the boss of me.”

Orpheus
We’re on vaycay. School is OVER, COVID is over. We’re in New York City...

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A Journeyman

Prologue and Epitaph:

I am the fool, the jester, clown, a harlequin, charade, façade of many
shades and colours, mascara over broken fragments, dead and gone

1)	Megalomaniac charlatan, lost in destruction, finding the path, the touch,
the miracle...

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“In the time when the heart beat slows” 

In the time when 
the heart beat slows
I close my eyes 
and meet you there
that place of aether
the either or,
the conversation 
takes a turn,
all the trees holding
creatures...

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“Fire burning in a hill
The lines are rocky rough
Red angels wait to pick remains
The cindered shoulder
Of confused men” 
(Peter Murphy)
 





"On the Cindered Shoulders of Confused Men"



Close your eyes it was all just a bad...

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beMUSEd
by Michael R. Burch

Perhaps at three
you'll come to tea,
to have a cuppa here?

You'll just stop in
to sip dry gin?
I only have a beer.

To name the "greats":
Pope, Dryden, mates?
The whole world knows their names.

Discuss the "songs"
of...

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Poems about Poets IV



The Princess and the Pauper
by Michael R. Burch

for June Kraeft

Here was a woman bright, intent on life,
who did not flinch from Death, but caught his eye
and drew him, powerless, into her spell
of...

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These are modern English translations of poems by the German poets  Ingeborg Bachmann, H. Distler and Johann Georg Jacobi.



“Song”
by Johann Georg Jacobi
translation by Michael R. Burch

Friend, tell me where the violet fled,
so lately gaily...

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Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem: where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me...

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" Perhaps, life is just a disaster
wrapped in fairy-glow fragments ~
shimmering with stars of death... "

O' beloved moment of time,
take me where I belong,
in the henna haze of scentless leaves
draped in doves of lotus,
I'll whimsically...

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Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.

A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor...

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What if mind over matter became reality?
This would reverse the polarity,
of mind and matter duality, and their relationship as lovers.
The mind would become the vessel for the body.
The mind itself would look after and nurture
the...

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[A cuppa with mademoiselle Fana Tesfagiorgis] 

I had just driven my ageless self into the Kaufmanns’ 1936–1939 
Frank Lloyd Wright-constructed Pennsylvania getaway:Falling Water Mansion– 
In a 1959 Harley Earl, Cadillac Eldorado Convertible, and in the...

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The hypnotic sleep-walk will diagnose this flaccid imp in me
All the recantations will die there where selfishness butchers the prophetic shields
As If I were to go through the film of yesteryears...
The sandy beach anchored in...

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I
There are two ways of being in this world,
the eagle and the serpent, sometimes called:
while one seeks boundless heaven, wings unfurled,
the other through low dirt has always crawled,
and seeks to crush or poison.  Naked,...

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As Medusa walks in, shuts the door,
caresses precision hand down the mahogany-
and shows one what for.

Senses in starbursts-cloudburst
flavor crystals accenting- your bloom 
of predicate corpus, cat claws in my brain, 
comes metamorphosis-
Led mushrooming depth of...

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True love never dies it’s black and white in books
Love is not love that alters when  finds alteration
Love stories are fantasies giving joy to the world
Ideal love is an object set for lovers, for...

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True love never dies it’s black and white in books
Love is not love that alters when finds alteration
Love stories are fantasies giving joy to the world
Ideal love is an object set for lovers, for example
Lust...

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I don't feel right.
Who is this person?

Each gift given to me today is cutting away at my flesh,
Clean deep gashes in the shape of an X right in the middle of my chest.
Over and over...

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Sinfonia
Phi For One
Mu for Alpha

Orange splices of pure fire fall to the cavernous wall as if the world was on its head,
Shadows of friends in greeting prints the rock a far, 
I sit in comfort...

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"Night Flight"

the sky is 
an open eye
blue as the
Orpheus ocean 

clear in the 
shallows' grit
naivety irritates it 
birthing hard gems

it calls in 
from beneath 
the undertow 
a new dawn  

Morpheus deep
bipolar colours 
unrecognisable
hues and...

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The implosion of a thought is neither a shred or a shard. In fact it is surely a pulsation of a wisdom whirlpool? Really? How rather radical. And amusing to the laughs of the rhombuses...

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Somewhere between fallen flares
of an untouchable phoenix~
and the nostalgic red of crimson horizons,
I feel the amethyst embers of longing
illuminate rambling roses
that mourn within my hibiscus heart.

O beloved Love,
I long to be your tulip twilight
adorned with...

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