Long Rene Poems

Gold is your soul


The drive there will be boring.
The arrival so momentous!
The disappointing greeters;
The sights not quite as expected.
The smell at times will be rancid.
The art of it all will be lost.
They will say “Welcome...

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This is a story about a Butterfly

She escaped the Boilermaker
Through transformation. 
To transform required a period of incubation, 
a need to sleep to dream and 
the freedom of quiet self-contemplation - 
of course, such a...

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Nothing to hide*, Translation of a poem: “A coeur ouvert” by (René) Etiemble

		For Jeannine

(Later in life, Etiemble suppressed his first name, ostensibly on account of the accented “é”
 ending his first name and preceding the...

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Epigrams VII

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: 
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, poetic interpretation by Michael R. Burch


The Whole of Wit
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Richard Moore

If brevity is the...

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Visiting my father, I noticed the old garage
could use a little fixing up.
     He had boxes stacked up, and clutter to 
the very top.

     We all started...

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A French Narrative Poem: A wren comes to rest on a reed after the storm – Dialogue between the bird and the shrub. Translation of Rene Etiemble’s poem: Narration Française

(The very first poem composed by...

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Don’t the years go quick?
It’s another birthday BBQ
It’s that time of year again
When acquaintance is renewed

When family and friends
Come affably together
To eat a hearty meal outdoors
And sod the English weather

The beer and wine is chilled
The...

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In the library - for contest

Books are the ever- burning lamps
Of knowledge and wisdom....
It 's  a well-established truth and I
also nod in full agreement...
But let me say this, I am not a nerd
And I...

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"The Anatomy of God"

Who shall say there is one God?
if there are many, as it seems
in all the world’s sects and religions -
Who is their God? Is the source
some universal, bright, big, ultra simple,
ultra clean...

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Hail to the thieves
that retrieve
lost trees. 

Hey! Where do you disappear?

Hail to the piercing taste of a pear. 

Hey! Why do you gaze at me so?

I don't need reality unless it's mine. 

Talk to me....

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The boy was aged about eighteen,
Pale and pensive, 
Weary and frail in appearance. 
He could have been 
Goethe's Werther, 
Senancour's Obermann 
Or Chateaubriand's melancholy hero, 
Embraced by a generation, 
And about whom Sainte-Beuve said:
"Rene, c'est...

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I pay homage to a special group
Our ladies here on Poetry Soup

I shall start my list with mother Beer
A Lady with whom I hold so dear

Of Elaine George it’s clear to see
She melts my heart...

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Pop was quite a poet,
though his bio wouldn’t show it,
with the exception of this little poem
which I really do feel I owe him.

He was happiest working in the wood,
and did so when ere he could.
That...

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"The Double Secret"




I am skin and bone
wrapped tightly around
an immaculate heart that’s hidden
but known to a fierce soul

Human daughter, sprinkled with holy water

Wherever there is Love
Inside you, there is the Light 
to guide Love Home
a...

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I THINK THEREFORE I AM


"An ounce of hypocrisy is worth 
a pound of ambition" --Michael Korda

Liberty...
This everyone's want--
stretching an autonomy to unbuckle self-discovery

I got mites and bugs living in my head--
infesting my mind. They... daring...

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Robin Hood, man in tights
Julius Caesar, might makes right
Alexander, called "the Great"
Sitting Bull, righteous hate
Robert the Bruce, Attila the Hun
Charlemagne, Napoleon

Hear the call of the alpha male!
Warriors leave a bloody trail.

George Washington, man on the...

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supporting the anti-communists in 
the Soviet Union from
1944 to 1989---
supporting al-Za’im in Syria in
1949---
installing Shah Mohammed Reza 
Pahlevi in 1953 Iran---
supporting Colonel Carlos Castillo 
Armas in 1954 Guatemala---
providing weapons to anti-communist
Tibetans, from the mid-1950’s to...

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Memory

I am my memory.
This piece of the world, this brief sprouting
Amongst many thinking radishes, 
Exists only as resonances within 
Lacy neurons; Flanders’ delicate patterns 
Sustained by glial skeletons, 
Beyond the spider’s web or silent
Snowflake in...

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Most don't get to feel the warm rays of sun hit their face in the early morning
Most don't get to put on clean, fresh clothes and decent shoes in the morning
Most don't get to get...

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please don't leave me here
please don't leave me now
please, oh please, I beg you
take me with you,
surely you know how

please don't lie there so still
so seemingly asleep
please, oh please, don't leave me
for I will forever...

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The deception of  “free verse”: Dreams II, Translation of Etiemble’s “L’imposture du vers libre” by T. Wignesan

“Free verse, free not to be verse” – Audiberti

My love is not blue like a lake
my love is...

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My last words to you were, "I love you."  Those were your last words to me
on the phone. You were in Miami. The night we spoke you were rushed to the hospital. Your life...

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Out there on a twist of fate, on razor backs, on oblivion's mistakes
Demons spin atomic particles like microscopic balls creating tables
Making them from something more than medieval trees
Lets call it demon wood or satanic particles...

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The art of conversation and Titian
 

Hail to the thieves
that retrieve
lost trees. 

Hey! Where do you disappear?

Hail to the piercing taste of a pear. 

Hey! Why do you gaze at me so?

I don't need reality...

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The Offering, Translation of “Offrande” by René Etiemble

(Quatrains rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, ghgh, each line made up of eleven to thirteen syllables. Etiemble is wary of free verse as we shall see in the next...

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