Long Question Poems

An icy chill descends on 13 Beaver Veil Cottage as sisters Ester and Ellie walk gingerly up the steps on this wet and windy night.
This once charming pied-a-terre was now in a final phase denouement.
The...

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n icy chill descends on 13 Beaver Veil Cottage as sisters Ester and Ellie walk gingerly up the steps on this wet and windy night.
This once charming pied-a-terre was now in a final phase denouement.
The...

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Just enough to make it just
I want this to be enough to make this
The last song ever, the last note ever
The last romantically, poetically sad excuse for an apology, epilogue
But I've already messed up the...

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Rumors
How we arrived at where we are
By Franklin Price
05/03/2020

By now you've heard the rumors
How Covid-19 came to Earth
How it did not come here naturally 
How Wuhan, China gave it birth

Maybe aided by our government
To make...

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It may have been the devil himself who prompted the kids in my schoolyard back in 1947 to chant "Patsy Foley's roly-poly from eating too much ravioli."

At first, no one could remember who started the...

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I see people moving, but going nowhere
I see people moving with their hands thrown in the air
I see people moving but they have nothing to share
Bags and pans, old kettle, and old man
The scavenger, the...

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“SUMMER”



Where 
has Summer 
gone?

The world 
has lost 
Summer

Sweet 
little 
dream

missing 

all those other 
beautiful  
small dreams 

seen as toys
small and 
inconsequential 

casually tossed aside, 
disposable play,
things

pure shining lights
smiling eyes once so bright, 
switched off,

'neath...

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I have been reluctant to pen this verse 
Because I don't understand what it was all about
I have been reluctant to pen this verse
Because I don't want anyone to  get hurt
Morning comes and evening...

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Dear people, 
    (Am i?) Mad it’s a conformist state?
A status that perpetuates people to pair, to compare, to prepare, 
to perfect, before performance, …?
    -sure hard to try...

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With this needle and thread I stitch the wounds Avril left
but with this blade I angrily carve a new
rough, short, jagged adjacent from the bone in my wrist
for a reflection of our relationship
and an outlet...

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"Blue Sky, Why?"

stories speak to us.
inside our heart 
is crying.

Blue Sky, Why?

why do children
holding sunflowers
watch their parents die

why do sweet children,
now war torn, 
some the battle's orphans,
daily lose their lives

lying in their sick beds
bombed in...

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Limericks
by Michael R. Burch



Clyde Lied!
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a mockingbird, Clyde,
who bragged of his prowess, but lied.
To his new wife he sighed,
"When again, gentle bride?"
"Nevermore!" bright-eyed Raven replied.



The Platypus
by Michael R. Burch

The platypus,...

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Poems about Dogs

This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my...

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Limericks VII - Naughty, Bawdy, Risque, Absurd

There continue to be modern sequels of the famous "Nantucket" limericks, including this bawdy one of mine:

There was a lewd whore from Nantucket
who intended to pee in a bucket;
but...

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Left:
Let's start at the beginning
of your ecotherapeutic day.

I'm talking today with Fr. Time,
Earth's only fully self-ordained ecotherapist,
and recently published author of
"Journals of MotherEarth."

We have no corporate sponsorships to report,
although we are for sale
especially if you're...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VI



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound...

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Too many times sadly
too seldom gladly
I must learn to trust
Earth's future more

Both Father Sun's timeless 
rounds of enlightenment
and Mother Earth's
codependent rhythms
regenerating rich 
empowering 
soulful soil
and surfing seas

And this trusting more
impels healing trauma's lessons,
surviving hale and...

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Limericks III - Grab Bag

Being a peace activist, I once wrote a limerick in an attempt to stop needless wars:

Of Tetley’s and V-2's
(or "Why Not to Bomb the Brits")
by Michael R. Burch

The English are very...

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It’s heading for our planet at ten thousand miles an hour
To stop it all the experts say we haven’t got the power
All the nukes in all the world won’t constitute a plan
So someone said, ‘All...

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See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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ALBERT EINSTEIN POEMS

These are "poems" I created from Albert Einstein quotes, changing a word here and there for the sake of meter and rhyme...



A question that sometimes drives me hazy: 
am I or are the...

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Hi.
We don't have a lot of time,
or, well, I guess you do,
but I don't,
so let's plunge right into the first big question:
Which came first, form or function?

False dichotomy. No such thing as a totally dysfunctional...

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You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
 
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened...
 
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching...
 
You...

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Tell me,
Father Time,
if you would share this space
it would mean everything to me
to us, so kind,
which forms of integrative diversity
incarnate your highest priority,
most comprehensive,
social-political-economic-cultural issues:

1. Domestic economy flat-line trends,

2. International peace intent and praxis,

3. Universally...

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I listened to his heart profusely, 
For a beat like his was much to ponder
I often wondered, his thoughts, and,
A light in me knew, with wretched wonderment
What the whispers in his mutterings meant to me

They...

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