Long Prancing Poems

Charles d'Orleans: a Medieval Marvel


Spring
by Charles d’Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab...

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Medieval Poems

How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern...

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Spring
by Charles d'Orleans (c.1394-1465)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab at whatever passes,
so we can...

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Oasis
by Michael R. Burch 
 
for Beth
 
I want tears to form again
in the shriveled glands of these eyes
dried all these long years
by too much heated knowing.
 
I want tears to course down
these parched cheeks,...

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Oft in My Thought
by Charles D'Orleans
translation by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet...

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     by how many badbyes can you measure the length of your day

                 first comes...

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POEMS ABOUT EROS AND CUPID

These are translations of ancient Greek poems about Eros. Eros was the Greek counterpart of the Roman god Cupid. While today we tend to think of Cupid as an angelic cherub...

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* For J.K. Rowling *

                 ~ 

now, deliberate your hearing
     to bring back the pages...

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"The Crow Bar"

she said,
here I bury my dead,
you can hear them sleeping
somnulent forget-me-nots,
snoring blithely unaware,
in neat rows between 
the thick,
ink injected lines,
their soiled lives
ploughed and 
turned over 
replanted
sunnyside down
expunged and 
wrung out

eventually,
not totally oblivious, 
they...

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Prelude

After banishing my foe off to hell
The Lord took pity on my soul 
And returned it to my undead shell
Again, I was alive and whole

But the consequences of a second chance
Meant that I would have...

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Stars fall under failing skies...stars fall...stars fall...
But stars do not cry.
Into Ochs valley, through the Vale of White Horse...prancing 
besides a Dragons Hill;
It was here that a Roundhead - did a Royalist Cavaliers blood in...

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Voices of creation speak Type A and Type B,
and polyglot dialects through Z, 
somehow under what lies in shadow
from B through Z

Anyway, Type A conscious I am alive
in this indoor moment
awake but not directly sun-absorbing...

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Intertwined in everything and nothing. Apart forever and never apart. Always reaching, never meeting. Intertwined in nothing and everything. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I twist and turn rising higher. 
I’m forced into destruction and anger. 
I want to dance...

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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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The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind
slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined
at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned) 
sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,
when the lightning...

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Elder Darwin swims in ethology.
He rolls in his deep grave ecology.
He itches and scratches his dissonance
that survival of most fitted and dense
implies manifest destiny for those YangStrong
while Darwin's Cross and his own eyes
clearly disguised
camouflaged ectosymbiotic...

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 No. 1. Jingle Bells

     Jingle Bells ,Jingle Bells, ringing all the way
     What a fun is to ride in a one -horse open sleigh.
  ...

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Warning: Mature themes, though at the time.             

             Recollections of a...

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Rassaphrass’s husband LeRoy went out for garlic bread on a Tuesday.  She ate all the spaghetti and meatballs before he returned, to teach him a lesson, because he took too long.  He brought...

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THE RISING HILLS, THE SLOPES, TO QUENCH MY THIRST.
In the last century, the hopes were little,
Grasses they collected, yellow bananas, they peeled,
To move up the slopes, preparation was fore filled,
Oh the grower of banana trees,
To...

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Kindly stick to digging pineapples in the future as magic dust particles can really only spring up in defense patterns. And is it really wise to deal cards in a high tide. Deliver not an...

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There was a dear who had a ridge that she perched from
It was where she felt welcome 
Below there was a road 
Where cars must go. 

They would be driving in singles and pairs 
Going...

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Long long ago in a lonely lovely hill
When earth was young, handsome and green
Besides the meadow near the curly winding flow
There stood a tree proudly high and spry.

Swaying and dancing in wheezy pleasy breeze
Never was...

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Sy Roth - 3 Poems
12/17/20130 Comments
 
Picture
Silence

I’ve dreamt often that she crept deep
Into my cellular structure, 
Some time in the nightfall of my being
And planted deeply into my mitochondrion,
A magical silence pill,
Drowning the kittens of...

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I can still feel your spirit crying out inside me
Everywhere I go I can feel you walking beside me
And a village of spies running around me
Something is really making me uneasy
No one is really bothering...

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