Long Reader Poems

Some pro's and con's of being connected to virtual reality

Dune not be bashful, grumpy, leery
or any other contemporary dwarf man
regarding countless less well known dwarves
(that never got a chance
to play a bit part) such as...

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Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis, high bred poiet?s of mine

     ("Thus always I cause the death of tyrants.”)
the purported line Brutus uttered 
after assassinating Julius Caesar.

     Alternatively...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s Poem 33 in Interrogation Rooms by T. Wignesan

33.  on a vu un homme courir/ de la scène de crime un homme est maintenant en train d’aider/ la police avec...

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Galore of buzzfeeding, needling and scamming female hustlers...

with a scheming, loving, and enticing guise
alive and well seeking gullible guys
(once upon a time just like me),
who experiences close encounters
of masterly baited entrapment
on Facebook Messenger
and most likely...

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“The Fallen”



Remote,
he sees himself 
in the reflection of cold close 
yet distant shop windows, 
his final journey along the 
Hard Time Road
walking alone, 
unforgiven, no home
for the rest of his natural life 
a million knives...

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No Mark
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes, 
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before...

here where you have...

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Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

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Oft in My Thought
by Charles D'Orleans
translation by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet...

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The language and images of Mario Vitale's poetry are so closely bound to the natural cycles of seasons, of generations, of the body's functioning, that is surprising to realize how many of his poems deal...

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Dear Novice Poet,
Welcome to the wide open wonderful world of poetry!  Today more than ever before, a poem can easily be whatever you want it to be.  The rules are simple.  There...

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Merov’s Ghost (1) and Other Shots Across My Bow!

In mid-November of Fourteen, I published my first web verse here, (2)
the earliest spanned sixty years, composed for Senior English class
one night in Nineteen Sixty-One. Assigned just...

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I met a proper woman in a proper pub on a Monday in Peoria. It was noon, time for lunch, and we were sitting stool to stool over very large burgers at a long mahogany...

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Some Pro's and Con's of being Virtually Connected to Reality poetic verses

Dune not be bashful, grumpy, leery
or any other contemporary dwarf man
even countless less well known dwarves
(that never got a chance
to play a bit part)...

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Already I reached the place where heard the sound
Of falling water in the circle next
Suchlike the rumble done by hives around,

When three spirits together changed their treks,
Running, out of  an horde just passing there
Under...

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On a typical English day late June Joe travelled the above country road, his buisness was in the construction field, and this day he was estimating work as per customer enqiriy, this being the case...

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Thoughts can be thin fractures in the order of things.
Sometimes my dorm room seems a sterile sarcophagus, like an accusation, or an interrogation about my romantic choices, with nothing warm or inviting there. Sometimes I’ve...

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Moby Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, published in London in October 1851 as The Whale and a month later in New York City as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. It is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne....

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I tell, to follow, that long trait before
We reached the  back foot of the tower tall,
Our eyes went up to the top core

For two little flames we saw install,
And another responding from so far
That...

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Poetic Encryption Like Ancient Egyptian

This terror and threat to poetic clarity,
Becomes a pet rock for some poets.

Words do count for sure, but so does
Clarity unless poets put a mask on.

Encryption can be used to mask...

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Long in the tooth male doth recount, reflect, reimagine...
his woebegone damn dental daze today May 5th, 2021 

No particular rhyme nor reason
garden variety indentured flunky (me)
revisits his salmagundi salad days, 
when oral blight smote 
left...

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if you have taken the time to browse through this eclectic collection of self-indulgent foolishness, I hope you’ve been entertained by the quirkiness of its content, or at the very least, annoyed by the pervasiveness...

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Of new pains new verses must be composed 
To give matter for the canto twenty
Of the canticle first, treating sunk posed.

I just was inclined with desires many
To thoroughly look at the open deep,
Which was moisten...

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Birthday of beloved buxom babe I betrothed

Pardon my hyperbole if in fact such embellishment can be sifted out amidst the pretentious poetry and/or prose NOT aired to appear superior, but more so as passion for...

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Increase In Head Size

impossible mission to encapsulate notion 
flitting hither and yon, to and fro
within cranium attached to mine body,
whereby irrefutable proof prevails
predicated when yours truly
scrutinizes other people visibly aware,
I a modest married male 
blessed,...

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"The Crow Bar"

she said,
here I bury my dead,
you can hear them sleeping
somnulent forget-me-nots,
snoring blithely unaware,
in neat rows between 
the thick,
ink injected lines,
their soiled lives
ploughed and 
turned over 
replanted
sunnyside down
expunged and 
wrung out

eventually,
not totally oblivious, 
they...

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