Long Phonograph Poems

The Tender Weight of Her Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

The tender weight of her sighs
lies heavily upon my heart;
apart from her, full of doubt,
without her presence to revolve around,
found wanting direction or course,
cursed with the thought...

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I melt into the plural sky
its rippling tableaus of tomorrow
underneath open light waves 
see-saws the labyrinth
like Delphi tendrils crossing channels 
all the changing faces played
automatic, embedded in misty consort 
with Hyde-Lees and Yeats 
love-crushed oracles
ghostwriting...

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Soliloquio del Individuo by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan


(Homage to Nicanor PARRA, 1914-2018, the Chilean ANTI-POET, winner of the "Cervantes Prize" (the highest literary honour for writers in Spanish), four times nominated for the...

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Forty-seven years ago I went abroad for college, then - after graduation - chose to live across the sea.
I called my parents often, and I mailed them many cards, but rarely made the trip back...

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Turkish Poetry Translations I



Ben Sana Mecburum: "You are indispensable"
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgul Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you're like nails riveting my brain? 
I see your eyes...

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"Symposium"



where do you go 
when you try to 
dream your place

in my life 

gone now 
from your 
quicksand shores

once I rolled over 
placed my mouth 
against your throat

what used to be

as if you 
could transfer
some...

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“We live on a placid island of fear 
in the midst of black seas of infinity
and it was not meant that we should 
voyage far”








"Intrepid Blue-Green New Gold Dream"




We edge closer and closer
to answers that...

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When the first humans walked the earth,
They all huddled in droves,
Hooted and cried to warn of dangers,
Lurking in the mangrove,

Loud voices and echoes, conveyed a return,
Along with a large kill,
A lone unreached tenor, to a...

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If, for instance.......you might imagine it all...
Do try,... if you can.......

Pretending, perhaps, that it was long ago....
And let's say,...that you were on the brink of discovery, 
      16 years old,...

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For the last few days
     her depression had weighed
          heavy, a thick woolen shroud,
        ...

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Ben Sana Mecburum
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgul Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you’re like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are indispensable; how can...

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A Renga for Poetry Soup:


Meander

Time and the river
Endless silver morning
Autumn leaves float by

Shimmering streaming mountains
Pines swaying in constant winds

Morning mirror
Another gray hair
Ah! the wind of time

Spring's last daffodil
Plucked for a dinner paty

Diamond blue fragments
Reflecting off...

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Ben Sana Mecburum: “You are indispensable”
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgul Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you’re like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are...

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The small antique shop beckons to me as if calling my name
I hurry to enter with great anticipation
The chime above the door provides an eerie greeting
The store is aglow with articles of times past
I pass...

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What compares to the present?
The present is like a needle
Time threading through its eye
A needle on a phonograph
My record is now on the B side
Still, I can't listen to the present

The future is encrypted
A symphony...

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A cricket chirps, a sparrow sings 
     Grasshoppers glide on chattering wings.
A summer’s day in august thus begins.
     Each crack upon the sidewalk 
Breaks another mother’s back.
...

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That old blue chair doesn’t look that special upon one’s first perceiving…but, as often is the case in life, looks can be deceiving.

There’s a reason we keep that old chair in our house…a reason it...

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Grammie’s Basement

A quiet place of rest covered with the dust of decades
Where wicker chairs of discarded summer days
Sit with tangled strings of Christmas lights on their laps
Alongside ornaments of glass so thin a whisper shatters...

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Scripted messages on a phonograph what's that reach
                     Letters forms uniformed text messages what preach
...

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The memory snags of prearranged trysts,
  Of bare limbed collision, how you invited me
Come feel the twin pulses locked in your wrists,
  Held in naked choreography.

Songs flicker distantly through my mind,
  Less...

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love sits
in that frozen phonograph of life
a broken record
playing the same bit of song
over and over and over
not knowing when to stop
not knowing when to start
it’s a hard feeling
on this record player
that always skips our...

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Forty three years of marriage and still you make my heart beat strong 
I never wanted to be anything else but your wife and loving song 
Together we walked, jogged and trotted but most of...

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Young Boy in Heat

I remember when I was a kid
Maybe twelve or thirteen years old
Just on the edge of pubescence and
Becoming aware of my own sexuality
Drawn to girls for the first time and
Finding them compelling...

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Children of the upper crust
upon the earth...........
that must be us!

They draw a circle on the ground,
so they can dance the moon around,
and then they draw another one,
so they can promenade the sun.

Put lightning bugs in...

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A two-tone case of blue and white
                            ...

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