Long Piety Poems

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

I was skeptically listening 
to a retiring social researcher,
and problem-solving imaginer,
from the American Enterprise Institute;

An Institute
I usually find more destitute
of bicameral consciousness than not,
and thereby with less healthy resonant imagination
than more pathological dissonance.

But, I found...

Read More

TITLE:
       Xenophobia

Heed the warning
This isn't for the faint of heart
Verbalizing my deepest yearnings 
They're bound to be a bit tart...

Because where I'm from is called the Bible Belt
Where folks...

Read More

as the PROPHETS of profits, WE lead and WE’re fair
while WE’re living the life of the poor BILLIONAIRE
– silver yachts, pearly castles, cash (plenty to spare) –
with the world on OUR backs... ah! the burdens...

Read More

Continued from Maya 1

At length, when the womens' screams had ceased
and the sound of the thunder had stopped,
he gathered his courage and withdrew himself
from his hiding place beneath the corn.
He left the hut and prostrated...

Read More

   


   Hypocrites sucking off the silicone tit 
of the antichrist spirit.
Man infestation from the pit of 
deliriot.
In hallowed halls of discord, whispers echo,
the chorus of the damned proletariat,
a venom, seeping...

Read More

My thought for this day,
although still early,
is respect for hope.

Respect for our interdependence
and respect for our challenging differences,
important, yet hopefully not as powerful
as our interdependent love for healthy life.

Yesterday
I noticed a brown cardboard box
in the...

Read More

1
Though still within our infancy, 
we strive to thrive, but woefully 
we flash and flaunt our 'primacy',
display our trophies pridefully.
 
Our terra firma ecstasy
destroys survival's harmony,
lays waste to life on land and sea.
Mankind, thy name...

Read More

Zulaikha:
What a bird you are, o red-billed Bird, 
you don’t eat reddish mangoes!
By eating which ash, will you exist then
in this bower of fate?

Yusuf:
That there is any fruit better than the name of God
and any...

Read More

This is a Crown of Sonnets I wrote about one of my favorite books and movies (the version in 1943 with Liz Taylor, who was only 11 had a small role, Joan Fontaine and Orson...

Read More

Ask your friend, neighbour or even a stranger newly-met
Have they ever been damaged by a ‘trust’ ….now turned ‘regret’?
Most men, if not all, have fashioned their character on personal experience
Yet these damned hypocrites are themselves...

Read More

In a sudden nodding shift,
I was lifted into the air by the hard wings of the Devil
His putrid stench waking me from what seemed all dream
And upon a balcony of singed vine and blackened soot,
He...

Read More

(Every year in the lunar month of Muharram we Shia Muslims commemorate the brutal martyrdom of the grandson of our Holy prophet Muhammed (s.a.w) and his family and friends at the hands of fake hypocritical...

Read More

I mean,
seriously?

Talk about
boundary issues!

I get it, 
why the 7th multicultural value,
and most recent
to finally make it in
to sacred UniversalYang/UnitarianYintegral
iconology,
doxology,
eulogy,
ecotherapeutic theology,
green ecofeminist ecology,
declares our polypathic RESPECT
for our interdependent sacred web
of life
reincarnating win/win love

As in,
could Elder EarthMothers
get...

Read More

Routine.
New Year
yet the same ritualistic routines,
absent their blissfully celebrating roots
buried in more fertile loves and hope-filled times
and might have beens
if not for this today
with these people
on this sacred nurturing Goddess Earth,

Still making more or less...

Read More

Patriotically empowered boundaries of apartheid
are also economic and ecological apartheid
of borders unrecognized by MatrioticEarth.

Economic and ecological apartheid
of Earth's nature ourselves,
one Immigrant Creolizing Body,
are inhumane and anti-healthy faces
of politically empowered fascism,
totalitarianism,
rulership of patriarchally self-inspired Elites
now rabidly...

Read More

I find imprisoning parallels
between early Nazi Germany
and early Roaring Trumpian 20s USA,
between fascist and fake propaganda,
between judicial patriarchal-privileged racist stockpiling,
between CEOs living above our democratically inclusive laws
while self-pardoning for agressions,
trespasses,
debts against a cooperatively co-investing society,
between...

Read More

CONTINUES PART II:

Then she departs, ... his newfound friend
stands (clueless me, no intro of her) I with Rick ... waiting
wife comes--(Hellooo Oh) newfound by brochure stand
he says, "My wife Kris." "Hm" <--(My utterance--smiling, as I'm...

Read More

Eternal Father gave Father Christ the three-fold office of priest, prophet and king and will be called everlasting Father.
Father Christ, I believe
The Holy Trinity is in Father Christ
Father Christ I believe
Father Christ, You’re the Highest...

Read More

This is a tale of ancient times
And a knight of valiant heraldry
Who followed true his knightly code,
The weight of righteousness his load,
All sheathed in heaven's grace he rode,
And practiced naught save chivalry.

From the Pope a...

Read More

Placed 8th in :
No. 1264 New Poem Only Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Brian Strand

                   The Light Of Nativity

...

Read More

  In the meta-versed binaural wish song beats, 
skid row streets of the bottomless pits of Metropolis/ Thebes, 
you are quardoned off and printed in a likeness 
wronged-vaped, winged
to the wilderness by their covens,...

Read More

An image of the netherworld envisioned by a misanthrope

Mein kampf fraught re: 
emotionally/psychologically challenged 
impossible mission to cope
compared to classmates, I felt like a dope
and entertained escapist fantasies,
whereby Miss Rainbow 
(sixth grade student teacher),
though robbing...

Read More

I have been staying awake for as long as I can.
I have been doing this till I come up with a better plan.
I have been going and going till I can no longer stand.
I have...

Read More