Long Pallor Poems

Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip...

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Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in...

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Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have never been accepted for publication. Here are a...

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These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch 

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find...

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The Cold Doorknobs 

I.
I am sure there will be that profound moment in time
when the dog out back will stop its incessant yapping,
Its unrelenting impulse to belch out its interminable wails, 
alas, to inform its...

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Ford's Theater, April 15th, 1865...
Petersen House, Washington, D.C.

I admit to own a passion
for the Civil War in general,
and the life and death of
the sixteenth president in particular
between a hard spot of whiskey
and draughts of arrack;
nonetheless...

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Watching upcoming toilet bowl lvii highlight of February 12th, 2023

Above title attests 
how mine mundane mein kampf
insync as a veritable clogged drain oh:
flush with adventure overflowing excrement
er... rather excitement.

Apt aforementioned accurate personal description
believe me not,...

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Watching upcoming toilet bowl lvi highlight of February 13th, 2022

Above title attests how mine mundane mein kampf
insync as a veritable clogged drain oh:
flush with adventure overflowing excrement
er... rather excitement.

Apt aforementioned accurate personal description
believe me not,...

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My Halloween party was in full swing. I had gone all out this year and rented an old crumbling, reputed-to-be haunted mansion for the evening's Dionysian festivities, and all the invited guests were present and...

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You are 'The Answer'
                               ...

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Watching toilet bowl lv highlight of snowy February 7th, 2021

Above title attests how mine mundane mein kampf
flush with adventure overflowing excitement.

Apt aforementioned accurate personal description
culmination of decades worth hesitation and trepidation.

Ever since garden variety generic...

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Petersen House, Washington, D.C.  

(i admit to own a passion for the Civil War in general, 
and the life and death of 
the sixteenth president in particular).

between a hard spot of whiskey 
 ...

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Cold, so cold, as everything seems to enshroud me 
encasing light, the flame of life - darkness within.
Slivers of blue, ice my lips, like a frozen lake.
Am I in a nightmare - is this where...

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At the breaking of the new dawn
Where the hopeful golden glow melts the dew
A sleepy world awakens to the brightened new dawn of life
But at the striking of that aged light
Where the anguished reddened heat...

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As the odyssey in the skiff continued a more sentient being begun to appear,
At times feeling as a eunuch who was unable to change anything,
In zenith of toxicity as miasma on a cold misty morning.
What...

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Shortly after the quake Francie began
experiencing the familiar morning sickness
that had plagued her when she carried her son .
She had hoped to be spared but just as she began her third month as last time...

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Yesterday Happened So Fast
                               ...

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Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?

The following extrapolated 
thought thread exercised,
NOT utilized to intimate 
how Fats Domino belied,
and wowed a crowded house ass-sized.

As a former ace procrastinator, I abhor
putting off doing...

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Lamenting life lost before mine untimely death

Last rays of wicked flickering candlelight
even to this present day 
(October 4th, 2023)
lxiv anniversaries marking birth
emotions of ambivalence self directed at me,
and family of origin diatribes still career,
within psyche...

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The Revenant pt. 2 - Leviæthan
 
                       I

'neath the grim pallor of a...

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Under the heavy and ash-gray wing of the evening,
In the melancholic waltz of memories awakened in rains,
Through the night stretching its hand like an old bell-ringer,
Ringing the bell of departure and appearing desolate in the...

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(the following extrapolated 
     thought thread exercised,
NOT utilized to intimate 
     how Fats Domino belied,
and wowed a crowded house as-sized).

as a former ace procrastinator, i abhor
 ...

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Here, this day, on this inglorious
Field
Thy vain struggles will count no
Valour.
All hope now abandoned,
Imminent defeat unconcealed;
Erstwhile countenance display 
Such waxen, languid pallor.
Surround by your dwindling 
Forces
Ye will but sadly find...
That the stout keep of your...

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Scarecrow Addict
           

Gritted and dusty
Powered by flack jacket eyes
Bootsteps through grey puddles
Flotilla of cigarette butts
Trash kicked aside
In a desert of litter
Seeking the soulless of death
Chattering...

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