Long Posts Poems

Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers I

I translated the first six Native American poems for my father when he chose to enter hospice and end his life by not taking dialysis …


Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation...

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Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch 

(dedicated to my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr.)

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long...

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Poems about Children IV

Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the...

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For Pharaoh still exalts himself and thinks he’s in control,
But if he won’t release my folk, he’ll pay a heavy toll.
Tomorrow I will bring down hail like Egypt’s never seen,
On plants and trees and man...

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Villanelle: No man can on his own escape written fate

         For Thiru-Valluvar, the “nameless” author of 
the THIRUK-KURAL

Note: In my previous posts, especially on Canto 38, I...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s Courbet: Elegy 8 by T. Wignesan

Blanches oeuvres ouvertes
résident dans les jours
la surface du banc de travail est noire
les géraniums-lierres
les fougères et les adragans
accumulent leurs oeuvres et jours:
La toile noire de Courbet
un...

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The Story
by Kamal Nasser
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will tell you a story ...
a story that lived in the dreams of my people,
a story that comes from the world of tents.
It is a story...

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Oh well I got an angry email to begin my day
Because of my last post on the Jabidah thing yesterday
Galit sa akin but greeted me with Assalamu alaykum.
And kung personal Moro friends ko naman ito...

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I live in America, as in the United States of America, and that used to mean something. At least to me it did. And it’s not so much in how I was raised but in...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part One by T. Wignesan

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part Two by T. Wignesan

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an...

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Give me a pleasant, 
Elevating and 
Elegant embrace
Times like these are Grim 

Believe in Him
Don’t give up on them –
The people you hang out with
So much fun, I can clearly see actually, 
Time and time...

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Twice the night had fallen upon a sleepless slumber,
Yet again awoken by winter when the third was three in number.

I sense that a silence doth sneak ‘tween cracks of weathered wood,
Conniving with that which shadows...

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Once the night had fallen upon a sleepless slumber,
Whence the winter woke me when the third was three in number.

I sense that a wince doth lurk and wear which wicked gaze,
Of conniving shadows cast between...

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Dedicated to the song “Trouble” by Coldplay 

(Verse 1) 
I didn’t mean to
I didn’t mean to
I didn’t mean to cause you trouble 
Oooh ah oooh
I didn’t mean to act so uncanny
I didn’t mean to act...

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I’m lunching with my bestie Mylie
She’s upset and no longer smiley
I ask her what’s wrong
She said in my thong
My bottom is no match for Kylie!

I giggled and said stop your moans
You're perfect not like Bridget...

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Everybody moved out of the country to get a taste of the shining city
Ripe banana, ripe plums, are perishing in Uncle Sam’s broiling sun
I cannot stand the scorching heat that is swelling up from the...

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K373 and K374 of the THIRUKKURAL: Translated with Commentary

The poet's name, THIRUVALLUVAR [Thiru = Sacred and Valluvar = the name of the priesthood caste of the « Pariah » (whom Mahatma Gandhi prefered to call...

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Thrice the night—the day!—both fell to sleepless slumber,
But now in Spring, though yet again: The third was three in number. 

I sense a wince remind itself,
Of what it means to be,
Instead to beg for booked...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN - Part Four by T. Wignesan


"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis,...

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Splat

Explosions do not always signify combustion but often combustion arrives after many years of layering the layers and tightly packing. Thus meaning that a fried piece of fat could slip and burst out of the...

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A wince doth lurk wearing which wicked gaze,
Of conniving cast shadows ‘tween my windowpanes.

Gazing through the window’s diaphanous gelid glass, 
I see a flushing fluorescent misty haze of frothy brass.

It floats aloft the frost of...

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Let me tell 
You some 
More stories

Since so many
Of you are into
Stories

This one’s about writers
And a bit about
Social media

I’m no encyclopedia
But I’m a wannabe writer

And I studied 
Neuropsychology 
And by the way 

I can show...

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How much I longed for the days
When the earth will rise to its glory again
How much I longed for the days
When we will give God all the praise
The earth‘s sadness will fade away
And we will...

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While flying through a cloudy sky, a blank and thoughtless glance
Exposed to me this big old house, so brief, and quite by chance.

I’d seen enough to know that it was large, and very grand,
A place...

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