Long Reached Poems

2003 TAMPA FLORIDA I CRIED OUT TO THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION ARLINGTON HEIGHTS ILLINOIS JAMAICAN THIEVES BROKE INTO MY HOME RIPPING PAGES IN JOURNAL ARSON MURDER DYNAMITE CIRO GARGANO MY EX ABUSIVE HUSBANDS TORCHED...

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BEING AN FBI INFORMANT WEARING WIRES PREGNANT BUYING WEAPONS AND DRUGS FOR THE FBI ARLINGTON HEIGHTS ILLINOIS CHICAGO HAD BEGUN TO TRIGGER UNWANTED EMOTIONS AS I SAT BEHIND MAROON DRAPES PANTING CIRO GARGANO ARSON MURDERER...

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I GAVE AN OATH WEARING WIRES PREGNANT FOR THE FBI ARLINGTON HEIGHTS CHICAGO FIELD OFFICE TIMES WERE VERY HARD BACK THEN I WAS SO YOUNG WITH SMALL CHILDREN RETURNING FROM GERMANY MILITARY WIFE WHEN THE...

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I believed that I was rural … that I lived in country style,
where the city was close handy … that big distance was a mile.
Trains and buses ferried daily; a freeway ran close by …
comforts...

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The Sun Is a Liar



It’s been quite some time since I've awoke early enough to meet the sun coming over the horizon. As I gazed out the window from my bedroom window seat, the sky...

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The night Before Christmas Eve
By Franklin Price
12/17/2016


Prologue

The Night Before Christmas
A most famous of  poems
Read  to children aloud
By their parents in homes

To children who gather
'Round the brightly lit tree
To hear Santa is coming
Presents for...

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I have been trying to find the right words to pen this verse, but since I came to this country my words are suppressed and my voice is oppressed. The wind is blowing furiously, and...

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Dad hit me only once, an upper cut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height,...

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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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Humanity keeps looking forward, toward the coming of a birth,
and we’re all deemed as equals on our first day on this earth,
but as the years go quickly by our lives become our own;
we’re seen as...

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"Oak" 

The guardians
stood around and 
shook their heads

great thoughts 
quivering 
from the ground, roots up, 

as if to walk 
confidently 
with great armies

yet hesitation 
was witnessed
in their waving gestures

perplexed 
and touching 
green crowns, 

there they...

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As winter hazes of January spraying
While I was meditating on how
To write this riveting poem which
Seemed to be for someone who
I never cast in my sight.
Despite her name is not an odd in me
But I...

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The First Valentine Poem

Charles d’Orleans (1394-1465) has been credited with writing the first Valentine poem for his wife in 1415. Charles wrote the first Valentine poem in the first year of his captivity while being...

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Family Poems

Mother's Smile
by Michael R. Burch

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much."

So more than "much, " much more than...

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Raisin liked to make her bed upon a shelf up high
She said she likes the feeling that she’s almost in the sky
One day she fell and bonked her head and Rum could only stare
And wondered...

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Poems about Mothers


Mother's Smile
by Michael R. Burch

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much."

So more than "much, " much more...

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Poems about Children


The Desk
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

There is a child I used to know
who sat, perhaps, at this same desk
where you sit now, and made a mess
of things sometimes.I wonder how
he learned at all...

He...

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Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

This poem has also been titled "Epitaph for a Child of...

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Twenty two years had passed  by

She blinked, and a lifetime had passed

She started this job as a lark

She never thought it would last

Two husbands and rehab were part of this bar

The husbands...her clients all...

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His glowing golden eyes glistened with a comprehension beyond the mortal condition

A well-toned, tall, and tanned man, who most, not all, would call handsome

A brightly bleached stalactite overbite gleaned between the mean features of an...

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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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...

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Beckoning
by Michael R. Burch 
 
Yesterday the wind whispered my name
while the blazing locks
of her rampant mane
lay heavy on mine.
And yesterday
I saw the way
the wind caressed tall pines
in forests laced by glinting streams
and thick with...

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Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus...

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