Long Pittance Poems

Every year In Robin Hood Country Nottingham
There in October, they hold. What is known, as the Goose Fair. It's huge. and goes back centuries, straining the Middle Ages, perhaps even longer.
My pals and I back...

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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...

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(4.)
As Midnight Hours Call In More Darkened Hosts

Slow flows a river of doubt and regret
foaming its swirling eddies and sad pits
cavernous echoes one can not forget
nor withstand jagged cuts and hardest hits!

As sun retreats and...

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Oh stone of death, I beg thee, now…relinquish me thy guest. 
Release unto this specter but the soul beneath thy breast 
What waits but to be wakened, and then taken now, to rest.

Mine is thine...

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Written 28 April 2024

“Genius begins great works. Labour alone finishes them.”
          Joseph Joubert

             ...

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Ballaraat’s known for its bounty of gold,
and the days of Eureka Stockade,
plus winning horses, on racing courses,
where flanks of the horses are flayed.

And the offer of prize is a bountiful one,
for a winner that’s greeting...

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“His fastball, so they tell me, has been clocked at 105!
His ERA is 1 point 4!   The guy can really pitch!
I heard he’s making more than any athlete alive,
doing what…when baseball started…didn’t make...

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          Corpus

                     in words 
designs 
...

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What The Roses Don’t Say
by Michael R. Burch

Oblivious to love, the roses bloom
and never touch ... They gather calm and still
to watch the busy insects swarm their leaves ...

They sway, bemused ... till rain falls...

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Le Rat Noir – Translation of Iris Clayton’s « The Black Rat » by T. Wignesan

(Iris Clayton of the Wiradjuri tribe in New South Wales was born in 1945. One of nine children, six of...

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...His starting point, after much hustling,
was a diner at the edge of the town,
the man who had once built massive bridges
now spent his days at work frying hash browns.
Working for a pittance, day after day,
the...

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Of first embrace and broken glass
I cherish that first spark
New light upon our forest' dark.

Do you recall that northern wind? 
It came at first so swift
Perhaps our growing light enraged
Poor Hopelessness', her whims denied
Inspired shadows...

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I ask you, “Where might we go:
A land to, or a land fro;
Let the land like a river flow.
Leave yourself behind, and dare,
Dare to know Thoreau.”
 
Ahh, how the day is
The simplest of all revolutions.
The...

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So slick and sexy.  Purred past Temple Bar.
That throaty engine advertising punch.
All legal London, strolling out for lunch,
with turning heads declared, “Now that’s a car!”

So many barristers are – if not losers, 
low earners...

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Disappointed Devil - Hood Das Fume And Fret

'Curse darned demon
     of that thar
     underworld nudged me abet
as a permanent solution
     to a temporary...

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Potential I Presume More Limericks

Big and tremendous come to mind.

Tremendous, stupendous, upend us.
Gargantuan, passion, trashing.
Immensive, aggressive, sensitive.   
Ultimate Utmost, out grossed, horrible host.
Pittance, sentence, repentance.
In effect essential, provocative, potential, quite intentional.
Necessity, complexity, anxiety.
Court Municipal, Peter Principle,...

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One hundred and one
Lifetimes seem a pittance
To seek and find
True enlightenment... 


Here I am once more
In a mortal garment
Adorned with an impulse
An echo of Your Call...


Still, I search
Not finding You
Because I look for You
In all...

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Mel got knocked up very early
when out playing the field,
then she went and murdered it
before it all got ‘too real.’
Now her baby haunts her dreams,
and she sees only perdition,
there’s a reason we don’t kill kids,
there’s...

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-
Terence a Griffiths of Tyrone or Leitrim!
Did he know but later of 1820 he would be there born
A Flax Grower a renter from landlords of Lord Leitrim's domain
To thresh and sack and cloth and sow...

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A COMPLICATED FATE D' COMPLI
Your bedroom closet is larger than this room
Where fears father plays the part of Lady Sorrow's groom

Your master bath is three times larger than the one I enter using a key...

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Part 1
1958 (Introduction to employment)

         Often I drift back to the days, where it all began. To feel again
the sharp brisk morning air against my inferior nakedness,
whilst...

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A COMPLICATED FATE D’ COMPLI
Your bedroom closet is larger than this room
Where fear’s father plays the part of Lady Sorrow’s groom
Your master bath is three times larger than mine 
The one I share with the...

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Black Hills Legacy

In the vaults of the U.S. government,
Sits a cache of money gathering interest.
But money cannot buy the hearts of a people
In exchange for land and legacy
For breaking the Laramie Treaty.

The ‘Black Hills’ have...

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It happened back in time, quite a long way,
Back in the day, as they today like to say:
An era when most donations to yeshivas**      **Rabbinical academies, often
Didn't require much of...

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My days in the streets of despair took me from scanty shanties
Intermittent through dreams drinking the syllables of books
Cast before my eyes, I was at the bottom of nooks and crannies
Hiding in barren valleys of...

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