Long Rend Poems

Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

Read More

Various Heresies 5

Tonight, Let's Remember
by Michael R. Burch

July 7,2007 (7-7-7)

Tonight, let's remember the fond ways
our fingers engendered new methods to praise
the gray at my temples, your thinning hair.
Tonight, let's remember, and let us draw near...

Tonight,...

Read More

History’s Greatest Miracle Play

Let me tell you a story - Prologue

Actors gather to play their parts
To set the stage – backdrops and props –
In history’s greatest miracle play
Called to speak their lines
On redemption’s stage
In a...

Read More

Was it a cruel twist of fate?
Sneering, laughing chance?
Perhaps something I ate?
A bad bout of happenstance?

It wrenched and tore at my gut,
A sickening, sober, foreboding sign.
Wretched chance it was not,
This time was by insidious design.

The...

Read More

Silence reigns supreme in my reich

No don (except me)
doth trumpet within the aborted
barren reach of freedoms within expansive realm,
I annexed courtesy manifest destiny,
which peoples now inhabiting said jurisdiction
circumscribed by following coordinates -
Latitude: 40° 16' 22.20"...

Read More

Of Ghosts and Fiends in Twilight


The sun sank low on the darkening horizon
Grey mist hung adrift over the land thickening
A cold, brisk autumn wind held and embraced me 
With my horse’s pace and that of...

Read More

Defecation accidentally clogged...

for the umpteenth time 
during spate to sit scrawny buttucks 
on porcelain throne id est 
videre licet toilet bowl...
with toxic water brew threatening
to overflow onto the floor,
and hence found yours truly (me)
immersing himself...

Read More

Botched and bungled interpersonal opportunities viewed...

tonight October  25th, 2022 
terrifically summarily requoting 

poetic outdated iteration,
I share the following lines
echoing in the valley 
of love and delight.
courtesy 20/20 hindsight
October twenty fifth
two thousand and twenty two
admirable,...

Read More

100% Natural psyllium husk delivered solid ecstasy

As of late - I could not but barely move
mine whole body felt
analogous to sluggish mollusk
frequent constipation found yours truly
doubled over in gastrointestinal agony

as if elephant or red (livid...

Read More

"3 Way Azrael Asael" 

Simulate me
I am a clone 
IT said

Stimulate me
3 way clone
I am

Azrael 
Asael

(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)



“All is Full of Love” / Bjork
https://youtu.be/cbGSy6PKOb0






“And the LORD saw 
that the wickedness of man 
was great on...

Read More

It is not mandatory
However, I feel that it is my duty
To respond to Carl Brouard
‘Knowing how to drink is not an art
Drinking is not a duty’
But a necessity which is obligatory
As it is crucial even...

Read More

Botched and bungled interpersonal opportunities viewed...
(summarily iterated June 30th, 2020)

I share the following lines
with utmost delight
courtesy 20/20 hindsight
June twenty ninth
two thousand and twenty

corrigible, fallible,
and intelligible light
hearted fella (aging
baby boomer) usually polite
doth not trend toward
superficial nor...

Read More

Regarding merit: absent, missing, void
Of all redeeming qualities, save one,
The apple of His eye, His "very good.”
Was He, in pleasant garden, much annoyed
When they His one divine decree did shun
To taste forbidden fruit because they...

Read More

A tale told by trees, rooted
in the things that yearn
far from sight and light of day
deep within the earth…
Wisdom, cautious, heeds -
woe befalls one who disturbs
a tale told by trees.

Long ere innocence was lost,
drinking deep...

Read More

PROLOGUE:

For what's in a name,
That Shakespeare untamed,
A lyric gained fame,
But when it became,
A different ball game,
For one who's insane.

Yet if twin Yanks say 'Gogh' , 'tis equivalent
might meant, to be, like 'goes',
Dutch disagree, cite, annunciation,
could...

Read More

From a distant village, where forest lining the edges, where nature dancing with wild rhythms, where human existence have usual conflicts with minacious wild life, I bought an unparagoned cow. 

superbious gait
she glimmered in bright...

Read More

Dragon wanted a summer job so off to Dragon Air he did go.
But his erratic flying audition brought him, only buckets of Whoa!
They told him to come back later, whenever he learns to, better fly.
Like...

Read More

One of Life’s indisputable facts:
Government reserves the right to tax;
And tho’ they waste far more than they should,
It’s supposedly done “for the common good.”

Economists use the word “propensity,”
Just a fancy word for “odds”, you see:
The...

Read More

Decades of art, and some as oil paintings, 
whereat, had most work made in just the last two years.
Persuades the heart, of similar taste, seems,
fair that, Van Gogh's work may be the best than of...

Read More

This nonestablishmentarian (Iman) kant riff!
Otherwise titled as: Thanksgiving
nothing more'n gobbledygook 
we stuff ourselves with.

Mine suburban outpost 
approximately thirty seven plus miles
southeast of where liberty bell marks
history upon cobblestone streets 
where sounds of silence 
from walking...

Read More

EARTH from heavy loam the potter does preform                out of the ground a vessel with no breath   ...

Read More

TRUE ...

You know not those dark
Places, mine, the dull, black
Chasms that hold a mind
When it's bare - stark and

Keen and cold ... when it's
Left with itself for time
Unquenchable, out of the
Streams of consciousness

And normality, scraped...

Read More

I knelt amidst the mountain's rise
        beneath the weeping opal skies
            there to measure Io's swoon
 ...

Read More

What mountain’s top holds truth’s last stand,
 its vista viewed as life’s specific grandeur;
 promised above earth’s horizon,
 soon home to you, this present era’s raconteur;
 prized perch upon and soon so manned,
 spirits to...

Read More

Between Earth and Ecstasy
My soul, wrought from the dust of falling stars,
Has embraced the undisturbed illusions, resting not in halted slumber,
They levitate, and like the crescent moon blooming, dark stirrings grow within me,
I rend the...

Read More