Long Pronouncements Poems

State of the Art (III)

These are my "ars poetica" poems: the ones about the art and craft of writing poetry in a modern world that doesn't always recognize the artists or their work. 



Come Down
by...

Read More

Poems about Poems IV

The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak...

Read More

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...

Read More

(A both serious and fanciful encounter with God)          

1. There are so many questions that I have for God, 
Oh my love, don't you feel the...

Read More

This pledge that l,Ntando, make today serves
as my guideline that I shall follow
happily, ungrudgingly and tirelessly
for the sake of our love life.
Indeed l am well aware of the fact that
the beauty of this pledge does...

Read More

Acute advice for those* who would be King from the THIRUK-KURAL: Valiarithal - K475
[*like presidents, prime and chief ministers, dictators or even modern-day "emperors" under the guise of revolutionary leaders of oppressed peoples]

Note: In this...

Read More

appropriate advice from the THIRUK-KURAL to those* who would be King: VALIARITHAL - Understanding the Wielding of Power, K473 and K474
[*like presidents, prime and chief ministers, dictators or even modern-day "emperors" under the guise of...

Read More

More appropriate advice from the THIRUK-KURAL to those* who would be King: VALIARITHAL - Understanding the Wielding of Power
[*like presidents, prime and chief ministers, dictators or even modern-day "emperors" under the guise of revolutionary leaders...

Read More

(Boo Hoo Politics was Written following the Brexit and Trump
votes as an observation and not a political declaration.
A few years out of date now but perhaps still fresh
Enough to share)


Boo Hoo Politics


What ever happened to...

Read More

King of Lies

It's all about you,
Isn't it?
Always, no matter what the disaster
You've most recently caused.
It always comes back to you,
How badly you're treated 
By the Fake News
(By which we mean the real truth,
As reported by...

Read More

On learning to become a guru...

The following artfully crafted back in the day
(actually poetic endeavor presented below
written a few scant years ago) in response to
unexpected positive feedback received on
the most popular social media platform.

Unbeknownst to...

Read More

the coffee that Lenin drank as he plotted revolution, the coffee that Hitler and Stalin drank with FDR as they divided up the world after World War 11, the cup that JFK drank before he...

Read More

An Obscenity Trial
by Michael R. Burch
 
The defendant was a poet held in many iron restraints
against whom several critics cited numerous complaints.
They accused him of trying to reach the "common crowd,"
and they said his poems...

Read More

It's inauguration day, January 20, 2021.
I could be at home, watching the TV presentation
pomp and pageantry. But old, achy, onerous and 
anxious, bladder full with no toilet near, I wait 
in a chilly car in...

Read More

On Learning To Become A Guru...

Unbeknownst to this unsuspecting witty mortal,
a reverberation attributed to butterfly effect
linkedin to hotmail twittering Facebook member,
who resides within Bhutan, his dignified volition
accorded me magnanimity titled sage without any

influential collusion from...

Read More

King Vlad is anything but Democracy’s man of the hour.
Rather, à coup sûr, he’s really Stalin’s nasty little boy
who ironically parades "svoboda" and "glasnost" like 
he really means them—actually he means them not.

King Vlad’s political...

Read More

Prevarication permits pretend perception, presenting
piquantly piqued, pimply pimping playboy, plucky
pulchritudinous previously pusillanimous, prevalently
puckish, psychic packman, pokemon playing proletarian

puppeteer pygmy, peevishly punky, plummy, plumy,
pompously pushy, pampered, prefabricated pinchbeck,
pokily plying plowshear, plodding peregrination, pied
piper pitifully peppy pornographic...

Read More

Beyond the trembly weald to glassy glane
beneath the wooden breath where thoughts remain
'twas a harkened land called Wordingtane.

The Wizard of Words ruled this land
in grips vernacular he had sturly hand, gimbly grand.
None in Wordingtane fair...

Read More

He Speaks

Drums pelting like a hard shower of surprised thunder,
Assaults the persons walking on the narrow unused road.
The only way to the old hermit- it is paved with polished pseudo-stones, 
Travelled upon by the ringed...

Read More

Hey, Mr. Politician, look,
Just look, what you’ve done
Stuck me back in combats 
And carrying a gun,
Bayonet, spare mag,
Primed stun grenade
Sent to sort out the mess 
You bastards have made.

I ain’t a fly boy
Whistling overhead
Not ever...

Read More

Summers' thunderings gather in brooding, heavy clouds
Soundless masses with shuddering voices
Calling through an untamed sky
Shaking above the meeker Earth,
Pillars of rain, shot through, flashings in their depths,
Electric fires running through the close, wet darkness -
Thunderings...

Read More

(Snapping fingers rhythmically) Vocalese with ease... yeah... moments… improv… Off the top, breath bubbling, a spontaneous combustion of sounds, to be boppin' the melody/
 Jazz popping vocal notes of wonderment, feeling the rhyme on beat...

Read More

Tell me if you can,
who has the holy oracles?
What house does the divine words dwell in?
Step forward if you are in possession
of the sacred, living words of God
Reveal unto us the oracles,
what the holy pronouncements...

Read More

Spent
By Sy Roth


Her ears still tremble with the sounds
Shocked into somnolence gasping to make sense.

The giddy bassist a rue of flapping gums missing the flats,
The drummer’s lips moving in asynchronous confusion--
But seem excited
She a carved,...

Read More

The impetuosity of inanities
Life spills, deals and fills
In tones and zones of vanities
Raised to a crescendo on hills and bills

On the beleaguered bottom
Society sinks into new perspectives
Derived from the atom
Devoid of subjective directives

Issued at the...

Read More