Long Overhanging Poems

Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed...

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A Stolen Memory
A Mirthful Chorus
By Sy Roth 


We surrounded him 
Asked to let go.
She stared at the misshapen face,
Unshaven sandpapery skin 
Eyelids a tabula rasa
Fluttery sere skin
And we could see the humor blossoming in his...

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The reading of Villon poems at West Berlin’s Free University, Winter Semester 1957-58
                      ...

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Precedent setting the stage for kerning and tracking piqued my interest

Just before logging off for the day,
and ready to boogie out of the joint
an email landed squarely in my inbox
cordially inviting me 
into the management...

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Vanished

the wild magic of this place;

this wilderness I now roam alone
as its lifeblood seeps 
into 
Afterlife

..my mournful howls
across time and distance
go unanswered -
Oh, how I long to join again
in my brethren’s song..

fading sunlight falls in...

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We came walking blind bends at dusk, 
An overhanging fig picked fresh.
No pavements, just a nervous trust 
that drivers would skirt our single line.

Hugging the roadside with torches lit, 
Phones swung glowing to the ground...

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It has been ages since the laughter died, which was many suns ago,
Soon swept away by fleeting time, like the brief giggle of a rainbow.

My vacant halls now are silent, and the flower garden is...

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Placed Second in: 
This or That, Vol. 23 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Edward Ibeh


                      ...

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A fat flat packed duck billed platypus was not on a platter. In fact it had escaped under a robe. With a robin. The robin was to be stuffed into a pigeon which was stuffed...

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It’s siesta, yet one can hear from the second floor of the house the animated sharing of juicy news some visitors have brought to the gracious host, the lovely widow of a wealthy sugar planter....

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"Cantus Troili" from "Troilus and Criseyde"
by Petrarch
translation by Geoffrey Chaucer
modernization by Michael R. Burch

If there’s no love, O God, why then, so low?
And if love is, what thing, and which, is he?
If love is good,...

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THE      ICEBREAKER     KRASIN    -     DAVID    AND   GOLIATH



Between the docks* for   cruise ships...

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for Granny Letchumi (b. fin 19th C. - d. 1978)

Once i was a prince in your highbeamed palm-thatched house
  timber and stone
   of hardened mud and cold green shiny cement
in your village...

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The rivers are racing with a glee of free morning stampede today
carrying the currency of silted centuries and the cool silk of the wind's summer saga,
within my heart I feel the rambunctious rush of wanderlust
this...

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No chatter patter, I'm alone in a lonely house as winter arrives
My thoughts fly to you as you travel afar in distant regions
You still write me letters, though with fewer lines
Yet, they are filled with...

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"Lord if it is you will, I will do as you ask of me.  But I wonder why you ask me, the weaker gender of your servants?" Deborah said to the Lord her God....

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The mossy green lump juts invitingly
An overhanging face of vertical formation
Moist rocks often kissed by hovering clouds
The steep trek is overwhelmingly dangerous

Fearlessly she set out for the daunting climb
A pull that attracts goal-driven people like...

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Lazily musing on the bank of a gently flowing stream, 
I mulled upon life: was it reality or naught but a dream? 
Then at the moment I pondered, what and why? 
I heard a musical...

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Skirting church on Puig de Missa,
then down the slope towards the river,
St Eularia's Rui, with path that winds on to the sea.
Past the smelly goats, where poking little
fingers get nibbled, and goat-dribbled
through the fence. 

Billy...

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When will I ever be good enough?
That one
stupid question
that plagues my dreams
day
after day
after day
and all I want in this world
is for someone to say
that I’ll be okay.
Even though I know
the whole world is falling apart
and...

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The wait seemed eternal to feel inspiration.
Minutes were mountains as each one ticked by,
my hand poised grasping a pen, and then
seated without hitting one stroke on a key.
A closed mind submits nothing, zero and zilch
in...

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Life is a Peach

‘Quincy’ had been treading on the eggshells of his brittle mind
                    cracked up...

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It's a fearful place it scared me in my childhood and it still does,
So very far in the deepest of woods it lay, black, a deep dark pool,
By bushes, overhanging trees, stretched across dirty stagnant...

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I entered paradise through the elaborate crevices in my mind
Meditation was the door to the place I had never visited before
I entered a forest and was overwhelmed by the jungle canopies.
The infinite sky was blurred...

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I wish I could take your hand
And lead you through
The pathways of my mind
Come…come with me
The journey will be
Bittersweet
But I need you with me.
 
Hold on to me...
Some pathways are frightful
The way is rocky
And you...

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