Long Rakes Poems

Here and Hereafter
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.



Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch

Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.

Because death...

Read More

Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
carefully in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains...

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have...

Read More

Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers IV



Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is your concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm...

Read More

Sonnets XVII-XXIV

Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten...

Read More

MODERN SONNETS I

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.


Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem...

Read More

Poems about Children V

Pan
by Michael R. Burch

Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves

Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles

where we cannot return,...

Read More

In sandy Egypt lived three men
In ancient days when pharaohs reigned
The kingdom of the pyramids,
Osiris and that Isis’ den,
Whom everyone worships and heeds,
Or at least doing so they feigned,
And those gods too blessed them and...

Read More

On the need to avoid being envious: Canto XVII, K161, K162 of the THIRUK-KURAL, Translation with Commentary

[ ENVY, of course, knows no racial nor ethnic boundaries, but I wouldn't be wrong, I dare say, ...

Read More

Reflecting in her garden sits a winsome little maid;
She holds a purple flower like the circlet that she made
And wrapped about her braids to grace her forehead like a crown;
Her thick and shining braids that...

Read More

I am feeling the shock of fast change. How to cope with it is of course the question. Listen to Beethoven through the neighbor's window? Look up from the page? Appreciate doves even though they...

Read More

What is wrong with deficit-growing expenditures
to continue supporting LeftBrain industrialized secular present
and past well-financed war-mongering threats
against nations
and people
and plants
and planet?

And nuclear ballistic arm-building,
and a Hummer and automatic defense rifle
for every Red, White, and TrueBlue household,

But...

Read More

Tears in the Crowds

A tyrant on a corrupt throne 
A sheep about to become a genetic clone
A weary traveller far away from home 
A heroin addict on methadone

Graveyards of peace and quiet lament 
An ungrateful...

Read More

I had a dream the other night
Of walking in a field of cornbread
Golden brown
Baked just right
One solid
Unbroken field

As I softly crunched my way
I looked up
Coming toward me
Was a line of tigers
With a man in the...

Read More

I had a dream the other night
Of  walking in a field of cornbread
Golden brown
Baked just right
One solid
Unbroken field

As I softly crunched my way
I looked up
Coming toward me
Was a line of tigers
With a man in...

Read More

The Church struggles with bills
eighty percent of every dollar 
is spent on administration
the cost of building maintenance

The cost of food and housing
for its minister's, cardinals and priests
riddled with greed some members live 
In the lap...

Read More

Oh wow. Oh look. Over there. A fish tank is jumping through a hoop. Now that is a sight. How rather remarkable and just how agile. Wish I was young said the ancient log. But...

Read More

In the summer Hot Weather, is the season of expressing the ultimate calamity of days of
unbearable treasure.  The measure of pleasure is fullfill as the season soon turns bitter
cold.  And now we prepare...

Read More

Calming water and the moon shining
Rivers of rays on a lake flowing
A crippled water painting appears
Men become half dead from having beers
The molten gold became the night’s veil
Blinding them from the white sun so pale
Only...

Read More

A Schoolboy’s Cornucopia
                                ...

Read More

Time and tide again waits for no man
tempest-tossed upon life’s billow
The hull or the dinghy
Serves as a fortress
Though steady on its keel
Knocked his wits and sense
As he vacillates between levity and despair
Caused by his unbridled...

Read More

Mwizi! Mwizi! Mwizi!
Shika uyooooo
2am habitual
I toss my sheets stand by the window
They all speak at once
''Achomweee....''
I wear my walkies and switch my lights

I scrunch my nose
Freezing outside
Ni nani?
My anxiety grows
I join the mob
Fury is forehead...

Read More

The tale of the high kicking raspberries in two hundred lines of silt and steamed porridge oats.

Keynotes noted kissing keystones keep keystrokes kingly. But kingly is often not associated with kindness, kinship, or kept keepers...

Read More

OUR LIBRARIAN

I once remember the
Librarian in my college  
Meticulous ,and savvy
His love for knowledge 
Knows no bound.  

I once remember the 
Librarian in my University
A man with a large heart for others 
His...

Read More

That is Some Hydraulic Brakes

One day at a food shop,
I met a man selling cakes,
For money he wanted to swap,
But I really wanted some hydraulic brakes.

"Got any hydraulic brakes?" asked I.
"For that's how I'll spend...

Read More

Psssst ¡

Did you know that the sublime petaled kisses
Of each could spin your heart to an aching mountain
Where worshiped on the pedestal of Earth
Such breath would utter your divinity

Ahhh ! I have collected these tremulous...

Read More