Long Quieter Poems

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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These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems ...






Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“... what rough beast ... slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”?W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a...

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I was skeptically listening 
to a retiring social researcher,
and problem-solving imaginer,
from the American Enterprise Institute;

An Institute
I usually find more destitute
of bicameral consciousness than not,
and thereby with less healthy resonant imagination
than more pathological dissonance.

But, I found...

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It was at this point 11 o'clock 
At night. Damian Left Molly and 
Checked on the seven. Everybody 
Was fine. He returned to 
Business. Molly was no longer 
Afraid she knew she was in the...

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"Ground Level Entry"

“She fits the bill”,
they say it 
insouciantly

visions of being 
carried in the beak 
of a bilious pelican 

where it builds
its rudimentary nest, 
it uses sticks and debris

no stones, yet,
from irreverence
thrown at it

no higher...

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I crept into the pit of hell all alone. Contingent upon my lifestyle I knew this could be my last day alive…

She haunted me in my dreams. She terrorized me in the sunlight but through...

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Closer to the edge I walk
Closer to my mind I reach
Everything that has been foggy
Clears up In a blinding screech.

Am I worth something?
Will I be worth anything?

Why am I alive?
Why do I breathe?

I toe the...

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Up up the fly away wig doth go revisited and revised April 19th, 2023

IM pen named Pilot Jane A. Rug
who ascribes to writing poetry
as opportunistic, holistic, and cathartic
warming me body electric
courtesy an outsize 
warm brimful...

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Should we shed the boy and be a man?
Shoot of spirit wild -to be tamed in the tamed land.
Where is the proof that this cynical evolution;
this cyclical passthrough is a strengthened constitution.
A blur and a...

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I am much more likely to feel like a respectful,
trusting family member
than an entitled warrior,
while outside "property improvements"
rather than inside anthropocentric habitats.

Sometimes
even as I approach my favorite sanctuary,
an AllSouls Unitarian-Universalist built structure,
I feel more sacred...

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Up up the fly away wig doth go revisited and revised March 10th, 2024...

(Any resemblance between the following humorous account and real life circumstance tis purely coincidental).

Went off for hair raising shindig
donning noggin of villager...

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A moment stauls...
Somewhere in between
What shall always be... 
Known as my lost and forever hour

Where I wake to sounds of thrashing rains
A clock sits staring, ticking and tocking
My own darkness illuminating lightning
Distant thunder following her...

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Up up the fly away wig doth go revisited and revised March 10th, 2022...

Went off for hair raising shindig
donning noggin of villager in Nigg
(historic county of Ross-shire,
historic region of Ross
and Cromarty, northeast
coast of Scotland).

Somehow postiche...

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Integrity warriors
are not allowed to raise our sacred voices
even against defiant children,
and defeated adolescents,
and immature monoculturish adults

Much less could we therapeutically self-justify
shouting out against WiseElder
matriarchal baptismal waters
remembering DNA's healthiest cooperative birthing
and thrival
matriarchal/patriarchal
yin/yang 
Integrity/Love Origins

Quietly
Mundanely replanting...

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Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart; I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets, and the roses, as at twenty years ago. - Victor Hugo

when...

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My past,
part of this present,
yet not desperately all
or I live too mortally
in our past;
still breathing
heart beating
but no other present signs 
of hopeful life.

Just so,
this present
part of our future,
yet not all,
Or we have already died
without our...

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Of Waters Upon Skin

Tormented nights has become my only source to stay alive
Nights passing without love… without dreams
No more in reality may I find comfort to breathe to survive
With without the curse, I’m only to...

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I wrote the Invisible man poems many years ago. These poems, and I have not submitted them all, was for a little girl who died in a road accident. They are a tribute to her...

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At first I called you Mama, then Mummy and then Mum
I lay awake at night 
Wondering how long you will be gone

I stayed inside myself, a lot of the time
I longed for your love
I just...

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No one ever told me that your heart could bleed without a drop that anyone could see. I didn't know your soul could lose weight that your shadow could get thin. I had no idea...

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The hawk flies high upon the sky his dinner there to seek.
      His home the woods along the river- now subdivisions complete.
      But he’s not...

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Booker MaCline stared out with his young eyes
at the rolling hills and trees of great sizes,
West Virginia’s landcape, so much different,
the plane ride here every dollar had spent.

It was quieter then old Chicago,
who's slums for...

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It never quite occurred to me, this silence in our house,
but now for more than two weeks, she’s been quieter than a mouse. 
And in our fifteen years of marriage there has never been this...

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If I were heavy into all sports and loved racing fast cars;                       ...

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...For a year they lived and were not bothered,
began to question what it was they’d heard,
but one careless night, though the love was sublime,
Miriam got pregnant for the second time.

Not long after things started going...

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