Long Red Poems

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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There's consequences in all we say and do 
Go forward and walk your walk and I'll go ahead and talk my talk 
Quite distraught due to the fact that you're too good to be true
I...

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“Come on, let's get introduced to my play mate in a palm.
Linda, these are Joshua’s true other selfs.” 
Lelia emitting a peculiar chuckle.
A comic situation arose where I changed my voice for each of my...

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When I was a child
Everything was magical
Full of mystery and the unknown
I read hundreds of books
The library my haven
My home
Hours upon hours
Night and day
I read and got lost in text
They supplied me with adventures
Secret journeys
Fun...

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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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Verse 1: We held hands and I fell under your spell...you are the hell from above
My heart has turned to ashes, but I rose again like a Phoenix because of you and I's love
I bled...

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Yours truly would never be confused for a gourmand, nevertheless I could enjoy experiencing taste testing select food samples if offered an opportunity of attending a fancy feast viz smörgåsbord, whereby oral indulgence would arouse,...

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This is the story of mad Molly Shaw
She might be mad now but she wasn’t before
she came home to find her man dead on the floor
She lay down her bible and let out a roar...

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On an early morning just before school
My tummy is churning my head hurts too
My feet are cold my forehead is hot
I have a runny nose and a tongue with blue dots

“Mom come quick!” I helplessly...

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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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“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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Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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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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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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Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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"The Payload" 

The payload 
came crashing down
like rain expelled
from the fat belly 
of a ruinous pregnant cloud 
bilious with buxom promise

it came crashing down 
like school fish released 
from the tight confines
of a course rope...

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“Forever”



When The Terrors came,
The Uncontrollable Ones,
she closed her eyes
and listened for the notes
her mother had planted
amongst the deep blues,
beds of Forget-Me-Nots,
she followed the 
labyrinthine trail 
and through a gate unhinged,
it would seem destroyed, thrown aside,
she...

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My husband and I always enjoy visiting
GrandMother Eartha
on Mother's Day

She often shares
last night's dreams,
which too often follow rather disturbing peak experience themes

Because,
you know,
or maybe not because,
how would I know?

Dreams about Her Straight White AlphaMale trauma
were...

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Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch

May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leave us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but her thorn.


The...

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Where art thou anonymous benefactor...to offer me succor?

Ah... methinks legal tender 
could be a boon to help me bolster 
mein kampf with necessary material equipage,
which prospect to acquire essential 
commodities sabotaged 
at the altar of...

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"As other spirits sail on music, mine, oh my love, swim on your perfume." Charles Baudelaire

"Sometimes you find an old bottle from which the soul returns." 
Charles Baudelaire

"Smell is a Word. Perfume is Literature."

"There are...

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State of the Art (IV)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...”  — W. ...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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