Long Photograph Poems

How unparticular the day had particularly been,
On March the third of two-thousand and eighteen,
For the caretaker at an historic Adirondack Inn,
Had lacked company, and therefore, dopamine.

 ‘Twas Sunday when all the guests had fled,
From either...

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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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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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The laws are not in the management of the soul, but the greatest science fruits are punished with the sounds of the rails that follow the trains of the cows living without breaking the suffering...

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On this day 40 years ago in 1978 my mother, Jacqueline Anne Trestrail, left this world after a relatively short battle with cancer - she was 46. Jimmy Carter was President and Annie Hall won...

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The photograph that Tim had shown me a few hours earlier certainly did not do it justice.
From what I could see it was a large triangular shape on three legs which were all at a...

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 The People with Wings
 It was a huge photograph of an eye – an amazing eye that now drew everyone to Mecca.  It was said to belong to one of the ‘People with...

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Impressive values,
like love,
claim resources that liberally breed
ecological
natural
physically happy health
and conservatively feed
emotional
spiritual
mentally glad wealth.

Oppressive disvalues
like homophobia and racism
and sexism and ageism
and ableism 
and monoculturing disregard
for threats of global anthro-supremacist ecocide,
express what we are against
because these are...

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"I am a painter and my eyes are the paint brushes I had if I look up with my open eye I see the Horizon I see the clouds to be continued
Oh shutter as I...

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"Barefoot in the Bushfires of the Vanities"



Heat rises slowly to rapture flames licking and teasing
Blue Ghostgums to stretch and crack wide open
as Fire spreads molten sweet sap bleeding burgundy all over 
amber gold wild bush...

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“Tessellate” 

on the surface
it’s easy to see
we tessellate

inadvertent 
decorative ostentatious
flirtatious lives taking risks 

with the other sides
planned strategic functional 
quantity rich quality lacking

Human

our words our ways
opposites 
like magnets attract, it all fits 

we think it...

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Verse 1: Hating can hurt...taking off my shirt 
Fading can make you feel like dirt 
Sometimes, I feel beautiful and high as a kite
Other days, I feel like a cow patty on the ground...you love...

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She watched the demolition team enter her old school. In the next few days it would be raised to the ground. The end of an era she thought, Christ, it was depressing.
Suddenly a thought entered...

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Dear Linda,

It's around 6AM, and I just wanted to share                         ...

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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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There was a noble sadness hiding in her eyes.
She wears a smile, though elements of insecurities
Trembled in its corners...
Dignity and suffering, combating
for the control of her expression.
Hiding the battle scars of her life; 
Intending to...

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(His Version of Pieces and Memories of You)

A smile one so beautiful that I asked myself, could she be real? As I sat there looking at your picture you would never believe me when I...

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Bounteous mass media mechanizations...
generate fixation spurring sexual exploitation
evidenced courtesy adulation
particularly regarding young females,
whose seductive poses 
linkedin selling (hard) wares
versus advertising males sporting, harkening,
approximating Adonis with remarkable beauty. 

Western civilization commercialization,
commodification, communication 
methodologies adrip with deification,...

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Interview with The Most Beautiful Suicide -Evelyn Francis McHale - May 1, 1947

So Evelyn, yours is one of the most famous of suicides, since you chose to jump from the Empire State Building in 1947,...

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Everyone’s life’s really tragic it seems,
There’s just not time friend to live all our dreams.
While you may try to keep stiff upper lip,
Gravity’s plotting to just sink your ship!

Wonder why some people’s face sports a...

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Will wonders never cease!?

Alternately titled: Last of the fluff
belonging to a Mohican
Norwegian bachelor farmer wannabe.

Any resemblance between said unnamed individual
and living persons purely coincidental.

Scads of decades back in the day,
not since this sexagenarian baby boomer
happened...

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It was midnight and my dream was shattered
I fell into darkness
A nightmare
I was sinking, drowning, dying…
But then I heard the laugh of a child
Carefree and joyful was the music of her lips
She smiled and suddenly...

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You want emotion...
Tell me, ask me, beg me to show you my soul, my secret place where my muses dwell.
My living hell. The tainted sea of all me, so what...so you can wash in the...

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I  sat at my desk in the early hours of the morning listening to the words of the mighty one calling “windows to my soul” kept warning. I didn’t question it, I didn’t understand...

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