Long Preference Poems

This is for the Contest - 'Titanic - Fare Thee Well' Sponsored by Tom Woody.
                    ...

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Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip...

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Poems about Adam, Eve, Lucifer

Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone, unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma...



Outcasts
by...

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the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no...

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Let's start with a fundamental flaw of fundamentalist Christianity,
a literary flaw within literal non-interpretation of historical creation
and sacred development.

This is true of radical jihadist Muslims as well,
although we both know you think you're more special...

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Today is assiduously
religiously different,
as I review our local RiverEast News.

Every week
Mike Thompson writes a solid Editorial
in a compelling voice.
I expect to only add
my hearty sacred
happy secular "Amen!"

Our nearly fearless Editor and Chief
calls for political "ACCOUNTABILITY!"
like...

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"Overcoming misleading [economic and political] metaphors
that are physically [naturally, ecosystemically, phylogenically] in [and of] 
your [ecological-organic embodied] brain
is never easy."
            George Lakoff, The Political...

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Start and end each day,
and life,
with a taoist egg.

I doubt my eggs are religious.

No, but they are natural,
organic incubators, 
co-arising nondual yolk form
with transparent regenerative function,
cosmological purpose, maybe,
if you're a chicken,
or a turkey, 
or a...

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Judging v Mediating,
like Teaching v Mentoring,
like Win/Lose Retributive Motives v Win/Win Restorative Motivators
like dogmatic Preaching v compassionately Communicating,

As felt
and appreciated by my LeftBrain dominant
RightWing hand
nurturing StraightWhite patriarchal 
overpoweringly privileged
systemically elitist judgment

Branching, colonizing, 
extending up and...

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Dear Siblings Three,

I was reading a story
in which some siblings became estranged
after their parents died,
while others moved toward greater solidarity.

This is a variation on a diaspora story.
But, here growing physical distance
is seen more as a...

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Stood I there, that last day,
On an iron bridge...
An aqueduct by design,
Where, looking dreamily out over
The Ernes Lower Lough,
My compressed shadow 
Momentarily paused -
To contently recline:
Amidst coy Junes radiant beams 
of sweet benign!
All was stilled,...

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Back in the height
of our pre-millennial military-industrial
post-revolutionary days
of competing excess...

No, love,
Stick with
Once upon our Sacred Times...

Once upon a time
here in the US of Northern Americas
we used a Reservation Model
to dispose of hopelessly disabled aboriginals,
too RightBrain...

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Feminist ecotherapists,
deeply immersed in polycultural ecology,
a systematic teleology of cooperative nutrition economics,
remain rarely flushed out from their safe spots.

A self-isolating,
often eremitic,
subspecies,
with shamanic nature-as-spirit tendencies,
our most articulate mentors often wander off
to pray for,
breathe and suffer and...

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How the housefly gets attracted to organic decay
and an infant child traces the voice of its mother
are nothing compared to the intense attraction
Michelle and I possess on the guy owning not a strand of hair...

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When the StraightWhite Patriarchal President
sent out his Praise and Thanks Message
"We love you"
to those who would cathartically enjoy beheading
VicePresident St. Peter's Pence 
loves homophobic St. Paul,

This felt like too much tolerating
an unconstitutional intolerable
absence of basic...

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Our humane-empowering species,
steeped in regenetic history
of human nature connecting
disconnecting
reconnecting
preconnecting,

Has an unfortunate tendency,
especially in Abrahamic historical traditions,
to imagine that our own religious tradition
is not only free of historical-cultural adaptation
but also the one supremely right-wing Way
orthodox Truth
healthy...

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https://youtu.be/c1gNm21YzfI


When last I visited India almost a decade ago
I recall riding on my brother's scooter 
as he drove me around town,
And I saw fully veiled Muslim women
half their faces veiled, masked in Niqab 
driving scooters,...

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I reflect upon a word -
   Innocence
To understand more fully what it means,
I think of what it conjures up for me -
childhood times -
 those times when I believed all I was taught
from...

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You, never, left me
Parents
Separated 
Children 
Sent, away
Others 
Stray 
Out, of, sight
To, fight 

A, living
Misery 
Seemingly
Very, very
Wrong
Everything, gone!

Life
Isn’t
Right
Past
Insight

A, loner
Bi Polar
Without 
Medication
To, boarder
Needs
Sedation 
Any 
Mind 
Filling
Stimulation
Annulling
His 
Sensations
Could
Cause
Dramatic
Fanatic
Inflation

Bi Polar stumbles, on
The, children’s, prison
Sensing 
Grieving
He, plans, on
Just
Leaving
Until 
Still…

He, remembers...

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Once upon this time
I was listening to the Christian Fathers
retell traditional stories
of God's election and predestination.

Predestination
is like being born into royalty,
power,
privileges of humane Earth's regenerative grace.

Election is more democratic.
Selection based on God's vote for mercy,
apparently,
because...

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Enjoying Earth's promised land
of compassionate
multicultural communion,
we share a preference for deep
rich soil
and fertile green-blue
resonating surf

As our bodies adjust
to rocky and prickly
either me
or not me space

And our minds flow
back and forth
through gooey both "me"
and organic neurosystemic...

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My fetal alcoholic bipolar:

“sometimes I experience low anxiety
and act like a happy drunk”

“sometimes,
like when entering new places 
and situations,
I experience high anxiety
and act like a very bad
and mean-spirited drunk
with immense juvenile curiosity and overload,
near total...

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Like you,
I make choices each moment
of each day.
Apparently,
we review those choices each dreaming moment
of enculturing memory.
We choose within a range
of resonance
--regenerative 
polycultural potential 
for nurturing WinWin resolution--
or cognitiveLeft/affectiveRight dissonance

Dissonance between our
Left Ego's Interior Landscape,
a land...

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Perhaps too redundantly,
and not quite octave-eloquently enough,
we have pictured Original Yang/Yin ReGenerative/DeGenerative CoArising Intent
as LeftBrain Patriarchal EgoDominant
with a preference for WinLose,
defined as Either-Or thinking
with fundamentalist vertical power hierarchical assumptions
that LeftElite will always remain conservatively On...

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Dear promising poet,

for me, modern poetry provides a peek into a poet’s inner world. Through this artistic medium, a poet speaks in expressive language of imagery and metaphor conveying varied textures of emotions and observations...

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