Long Propped up Poems

To a Daughter More Precious than Gems
by Otomo no Sakanoue no Iratsume
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Heaven's cold dew has fallen—
and thus another season arrives.
Oh, my child living so far away,
do you pine for me...

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"Candy Girl" - 2



He had been watching her from the far end of the Ice Bar, where he was sitting propped up on an ice ledge which was cushioned in plush Reindeer hide and Yak...

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During finals week, I’d spent days on various reports and papers, scribbling in the margins of notes and books, checking facts, revising flashcards and prepping with friends. I’ve an unshakable faith in plodding persistence.
We were...

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The news out Armageddon is upon us and it’s time for all of us to go 
The world's armies have all gathered and they are putting on a show

Heaven is calling and everyone wants to...

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In the heart of the country, a veil of mystery and melancholy floats,
And threading along the leaf of life, these methods seem a sinister symphony.
Open borders, and immigration comes like an underground current,
On the paths...

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Dad keeps pestering me.
   He wants to go see Al and he wants me to go along.
"Come on; it'll only take a little while," he coaxes.
   The thought of the old...

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Poems for Poets VIII


Fireflies
thinking to illuminate the darkness?
Poets!
—Michael R. Burch


BeMused
by Michael R. Burch

You will find in her hair
a fragrance more severe
than camphor.

You will find in her dress
no hint of a sweet
distractedness.

You will find in her...

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POEMS FOR POETS X

US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less...

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POEMS ABOUT POOL SHARKS

Shark
by Michael R. Burch

They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light...

I am not of them,
as I...

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POEMS ABOUT POOL SHARKS

Fair Game
by Michael R. Burch

At the Tennessee State Fair,
the largest stuffed animals hang tilt-a-whirl over the pool tables
with mocking button eyes,
knowing the playing field is unlevel,
that the rails slant, ever so slightly,...

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Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem: where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me...

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A languorous morning 

Nestled in between warm duvets, a goose feathered pillow or two…a luxury 
A striped kitten, a beautiful shade of grey, on a windowsill grey too; purring, gentle breaths, authenticity so appealing
A glass...

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Is not ‘Mother’ the sweetest word in the dictionary?
She's one’s closest friend, companion, and guide.
How can I restrict her within the frame of a poem,
when my entire world circled around her once?

As I think of...

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Emmanuel Abiodun Dickson
The Prayer Chair:
“Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my end
be like his!” - Numbers 23:10
A man’s daughter had asked the local minister to
come and pray with her father. When...

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Cuz while ya steel got
moxie, don't nix chance if only a dot
before death finds 
     flesh rotting alot.

A self-actualized fringe benefit
     as I racked up
  ...

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O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
Can't help but to recall this famous quote from Sir Walter Scott...
When one reads the latest revelations on the financial scandal that is...

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I can remember passing through
this town as a child,
stopping for a pie
on our way north.
Now it’s bypassed – barely more
than a clot lodged 
in the spidery veins of a map.
Most of the houses are empty,
the...

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(Continued from Part Two - 1)

Nothing of the foisoning ageold homegrownwine
       strained through Ol’ Kayyam’s ever draining ruba’iyat bowl
    keeps vigil in their scelerosed veins ...

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A man with no more than a hole in his pocket 
The clothes on his back and a picture in a locket
Propped up some cardboard in a dim alleyway
When a stranger came up with something...

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Because She Craved the Very Best
by Michael R. Burch
 
Because she craved the very best,
he took her East, he took her West;
he took her where there were no wars
and brought her bright bouquets of stars,
the...

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Time and Tides
                                ...

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Shirley Brown was a very beautiful girl, 
And her brunette hair 
Hung down her back 
And as the wind blew thru the window, 
It waved around. It waved around.
She was making sandwiches,
And was packing them...

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Afternoons the sky shuts down around the swamp's warning tapes
propped up with restoration piping and dirt leak fencing.
We’re fleeing toward the wild, seeking the names and shapes, 
the same way the Cedar Waxwing flit and...

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For long I have been an aimless vagabond
I strayed far, the world being enormously wide.
Traveling to lands foreign, I searched my fortune.
At the end, fed up with all that was alien,
And wishing to withdraw from...

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It would be disingenuous to say that Ingenium did not have a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich for breakfast. It would boarder a lie to claim the same deity did not begin their morning exercise...

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