Long Plowman Poems

Our lives and our time
Fired useless
Into the air
Toy cap gun shots
Those winter palaces unstormed
No tax offices ransacked
Where is utopia I asked
And no-one knew
They looked at me with pity
As if I still talked
To an imaginary friend
At...

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Brief Mane n' Tail shampoo tall (tell) tale

Living social amidst 
crime infested urban jungle 
bumping uglies cheek to jowl 
analogous fate being housed in jail
escape room of great outdoors 
spurred subject matter in question
to journey...

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These are English translations/modernizations of Medieval poems written in Old English and/or Middle English.


The Maiden’s Song aka The Bridal Morn
anonymous Medieval lyric
translation by Michael R. Burch

The maidens came to my mother’s bower.
I had all I...

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One fine, blustering, autumn day an old gentleman walks from his home,
If anyone wondered where he was going he was on his way to a forest,
The old gentleman walked at a leisurely pace stopping now...

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One fine, blustering, autumn day an old gentleman walks from his home,
If anyone wondered where he was going he was on his way to a forest,
The old gentleman walked at a leisurely pace stopping now...

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As Sol arises, greets the morn
the soon test taker wails,
"I'm doomed! If I had only read
The Canterbury Tales!

Or more of Samuel Collerige,
or Wordsworth, Yeats or Shelley,
More Medieval or Old English,
some Eliot or Browning!

Or how to...

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PLOWMAN 

(for Bill Troy, and Messer’s generous 
free Plowman Day.) 

Not soon enough comes the thrill of snow!
for plowmen who beckon the blizzard’s fall
anxious to use his craft of geometric cut lines 
and angles of...

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One in a million, gazillion, bazillion
Worth more than gold dollars a trillion or a billion –
You are my beacon, a Christian, love driven.
No heathen, no herdsman, no huntsman or felon.
No elfin, no ermine, no coward...

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The plowman seeks out the land
in this vast time from dawn to dusk
looking for the right mixture of soil
that he might produce a harvest
but with his own knowledge it is hopeless
for he plows and plants...

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Well and now you are somewhere on the 
Highway to Heaven or in the golden fields that 
Never need a plowman either way you should 
Be a saint by now 'cuz you were an angel...

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Out there,

   across the frozen tundra,

   the wilderness place ----

   the ancient song sings;

   returning, 

   since the birth of wood and glade,

When lakes fell...

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You stole my son without communication leaving me in massive distress.
With no regard to my feelings as I laid my soul to rest.
I died that night maybe two or three times you see.
You’ll never know...

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Moonbeam

The greatest thing?

The Candlelight Queen

The patrons play

   neath your luster

We welcome you


With open arms

   and knowing eyes

   we walk your silver gable

   neath your smile

  ...

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can a war zone hate in the autumn?
better asked in the spring
life takes on more fecund roles
robins bouncing on the sod
spring peepers drowning out
my dreams
and symphonies of war
germinating in sterile soil
of hatreds and the vibrant...

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