Long Reporters Poems

Prose Poems

Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost?lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is...

Read More

The Old grizzled Bear... was now keenly aware
    as he lay in his Cave all alone.
Where his time as King... was a mere passing thing
    and must choose another...

Read More

The Trial 5

Workers in the courtroom were making last minute sitting arrangement for Poetry Soup’s poets who have been following the case.  

Their comments after reading the transcripts, were seen by Love.  She...

Read More

Fox News  reported the following:

The news media was having a blast with Fear. He was saying he was the greatest attorney, the most respected lawyer in the nation. He stated he helped the judge...

Read More

Touching my hand was a wet doggy.
Whatever my fate was going to be,
My dog, my hero would be with me,
If he was in terror it did not show,
I was the weak one that I know.
With...

Read More

Contend with me while you can 
Contend with me and I will deliver the master plan
Contend with me and I will make you smile
We have been through worse than this
And we have always rise up...

Read More

In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A social worker had...

Read More

I wonder how many parents of students
suffer from studying and teaching white nationalism
against tides of multiculturing change.

And I wonder what our school boards
and state departments of bored children and family thinkers and doers
feel about child...

Read More

My life hasn’t always been easy...
                             ...

Read More

Heavy pressures of fame were getting to me, since I was world famous,
And desperately needed a getaway, as a rainbow sometimes detains us.

I was a successful performer, and ardent press went wherever I went,
Like exotic...

Read More

An entire week I handled it-
The teasing and the taunting and
Every night the moon shone down-
Was really very daunting.

Judge John squinted his eyes at me,
T'was approximately mid morning.
Cleaned his ear with his finger-
"Am giving you...

Read More

Where have you been?
We stopped taxing investments in worker-owned cooperatives
decades ago.
They all have missions to do one or two of two possible things,
To recycle matter to highest use
with least carbon-based effort/loss of reinvestment values,
And to...

Read More

The beautiful days were here again, as sunshine lit blue skies,
And I was happy with my work, which had seldom held surprise.

My job entailed overseeing, the raising of national monuments,
So that all could remember, a...

Read More

In case you don’t remember them they came from outer space
They were to be the first beginnings of the human race
But when they crashed they came down in a stark and frigid place
Antarctic ice interred...

Read More

I moved to San Francisco from across the bay in early 1977. At 19 years old, dad got me a two-bedroom house in the San Francisco suburb known as the Ocean District. It was the...

Read More

So America, how does it feel?
To choose a dumbass of a president
Such as Donald Trump" now?
Not so great a ruler is he?

He doesn't know the facts
He didn't take precautions
He didn't have backup plans
He doesn't know...

Read More

Just a day
“Good Night Mom and Dad” I said before I went to bed. “We love you” they said as they closed the door
Mom comes in and wakes me up “Time to go to school”...

Read More

always did what they were
told at work,
always gave 120%,
always was there early &
stayed late if needed,
always came in on his/her
day off
when called upon to do so,
never complained about the
preferential treatment
that s/he saw happening 
around him/her,
which...

Read More

Now the enemy is a vague foggy ghost
brought so readily and intimately to the forefront
those well-known unknown faceless pernicious enough
a hidden host in a wanted posters photograph
come they have to invade your homes
to run their...

Read More

From 2010. Narrator is Robert Gibbs, snooty White House Press Secretary.

Lay, O Lord, a curse on press men, rude and churlish, sad, obsessed men 
Who persist to query me on matters they know I must...

Read More

By morning, that's all the time I got, shot
dead in the head by a master on the microphone
jamming out the jams for all my homes.

Like tik, tok, tickity tok, rock
the clock before I drop
dead from...

Read More

"Royal Jelly and the Hornet Helix"




When the murder hornets arrived
they flashed their big black wings 
like sharp porcupine needles into our minds
we became honeycombed hypnotised, held in their hive, 
all one mind, one world, the...

Read More

Hey Rudy, hey Rudy you walked and you talked,
and stepped on your tongue, 9/11, New York.
So, tell me Rudy how did you know
that the twin towers were going to blow? 
You told the reporters they’d...

Read More

Alone these thoughts like annoying buzz,
zealously trample across minds agenda,
beguile what plans I had planned to play.
Yearning for release from ancient scab,
can I not sheath their crashing climax?
Xenon prayers list low and anaemic,
downtrodden by shoe-tied...

Read More

There has been much about being on a stage 
Since I started dealing with that adult style wage 
The Orange one used to welcome the new year 
With an evening date filled with cheer 

Now...

Read More