Long Quenched Poems

Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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your silken skin gleams opaline
bathed in Luna's soft wash of cornflower - like a
porcelain Madonna by Michelangelo
conjured to life by the magic
of moonlight

your eyes open just long enough to
affix mine, and affirm I'm in a...

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Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

Quiescent unions...

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The constant assault of the silence on his senses is intense 
Hands clenched in fist he wished for noise and bliss
Buddy stopped talking and drinking he begins pacing as he’s thinking 
Tired from walking he...

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A pondering of multiple raindrops from a detrimental storm onto the empty fields, crashing into them as hard and loud as clashing metals. The depth and existence of love weighs over any deprivation an unexpected...

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MORNING DEVOTION

Heavenly Father:

I lift up travelers to You. 

I pray for peace for Jerusalem and safety for Israel. I pray that between one and all of Her children would come to a saving knowledge of...

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Georg Cantor. Chasing infinity. I must!

He was a very lonely man
Tortured by desire to understand
The world and the God’s mind 
Like a fearless seasoned sailor 
He embarked an elegant boat 
Of extreme mental endeavor 
With...

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Scent Of Paddy Flower

                               ...

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Quietly, the memory of my grandfather manifested itself,
In the colors and shimmers of the Holy Spirit, 
I saw his human face,
The familiar lines, the flesh,
The pair of oceanic eyes, slowly blinking 
Smiling,
Like a heavenly beam
Splashing...

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The past can’t tell the future; I'd almost forgotten this,
The past six years had brought me higher yields than average,
Though expectations soared, now nada, nothing, zilch.
Our wheat fields decimated from the lack of rain.
And those...

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***Part 2 -last part- of the series, Not Focused (written entirely by J.W. Earnings)***

Hear me out in the dark woods of my bewildered mind and save me from evil deeds
I am intrigued by Your spiritually...

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I never could live without leaving something behind—
a trail of words, a bottle of bourbon,
and now these reflections,
because we can’t escape the truth forever.

The world smells like a battlefield,
and though I was never afraid to...

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"With every fiber of my being, my eyes glimpse at my whole life gone avail and unjust; the sacrifice mother had made before birth was certainly not enough, wish I had gone through the flames...

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Yes, Jose,
this is another love letter
from anthroprivileged me
to LeftBrain dominant you
for multicultural us.

I'm still here
sinking into my deep blue camp chair
with feet resting on a weathered
wooden platform
for my monastic tent

Now folded
and masterfully squeezed into its...

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SOLUTIONIST:
This is ANDERSON WALKINGSHOES... 
VERSE 1:
Drenched soul placed on a bench,
Avengers revenging not ready to repent;
Edge of grudges they always entrench,
Dreading of fate, that's what they depend.
Trends and hypes risen from their wrench;
Pitching and hitching...

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I never taught true love really existed,
until the first day l set my eyes on you.
My heart stopped beating for a moment,
my attention suddenly turned towards your direction;
though l didn't speak to you but knew...

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Down deep beneath fathoms icy keep, where deadmen’s
Scream in utter silences aquatic hell, amongst the devils
Graveyard of wreckage's carnage, there exists a ghostly harbor
Of phantom ships!
Anchored are the souls of the undead, and vessels craft...

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Nehemiah 8:10 (KJV) Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our...

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(World War One Poem)

Field Of Dreams

The World has stated our freedom,
the worms shall share a soldier's fear.
To look above my trench
is to be a thief in the night.
Life shall lurk, afraid of what is above.

My...

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Written: December 04, 2024, For Contest, Sponsored by: Ink Empress
                   ________________________________

A grimacing goon
in a destructive drug-driven delirium 
faces...

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The Gunslinger 

There once was a honest man, a man of iron and steel
Vengeance filled his heart, a lust for blood so surreal
No one knows what calamity has forged his evil ways
Or of what rages...

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 O beloved rose in my 
  garden of fairy-lamps,
would you bloom in hues of stardust?
let the daffodil moon 
  envy this fragrant field of 
immortal lyrics~
for I’ll treat you with kindness,
 scatter...

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Skinned shins on tree skins,
Space-viewed landscapes of rust and paint 
Showing mirrored continents imagined; 
Worlds within worlds at every turn, 
Outlines of Octopi on Oil slicked streets;
Every post and pole or stone a step:
Sat on,...

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I was charged one morning with the task to consider,
That certain notions of who I was,
Had merely become a pretext for avoiding
Becoming someone else. 

In the world I faced a new coordinate system was needed.

I...

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