Long Requires Poems

She looked at him concerned
"Oh my God, we forgot the buns!"
A barbeque happening
Guests arriving
Coals flaming
Food prepared
But nothing to put burgers on
For their housewarming

Hasty instructions and some cash
From his Lover and her roomies
Then he starts to...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems XI

Myth
by Michael R. Burch

after the sprung rhythm of Dylan Thomas

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and...

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Brilliant writers
have recommended to younger students,
to only write if they cannot live without doing so.

Elder successful icons of artistic expression,
dance,
voice,
drama,
sculptors
have similarly advised apprentices,
do not do as I have done
unless you could do naught else.

But what...

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Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil—
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning—
the...

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There is nothing weaker than water
But none is superior to it in overcoming the hard,
For which there is no substitute.
(Laotse, "Nothing Weaker Than Water", Lin Yutang, trans.)

That weakness of mind and body overcomes strength
And uniting...

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Near Sainthood
by Mirza Ghalib
translation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

On the subject of mystic philosophy, Ghalib,
your words might have seemed deeply profound
and we might have pronounced you a saint...
if only we hadn't found
you...

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"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

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I heavily recall two times when I had made you cry,
Both of which bewildered and moved me
My response was that of disbelief, and regret
And never, upon recalling, 
Have I felt more of the need to...

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Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the...

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These are poems about Dylan Thomas, as well as poems "for" and "after" Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas was one of my favorite poets from my early teens and has remained so over the years. I...

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When in the Course of Earth’s anthro-supremacist events, 
it becomes necessary for polycultures to resolve political bands 
which have connected Her with human nature, 
and to assume among the powers of Earth, 
separate and equal...

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Myth, after Dylan Thomas
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low...

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Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within,...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand...

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Polypathic conversation with David Holmgren:

Today it is common to hear the suggestion
[cooperative] education and [therapeutic] training
is the [mindful] key to allowing people to contribute
to a more sustainable [ecopolitical] future.

Although I recognize the value of formal...

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Says Csikszentmihalyi,
"Social scientists
(Abraham Maslow, Lawrence Kohlberg, Jane Loevinger, [Ken Wilber, Edward Podvoll, Julian Jaynes, Jack Kornfield, Richard Dawkins, Clare Graves, Carl Jung] and James Fowler)
describe a dialectical motion
between [Yang-ego-form] differentiation
and [Yin-eco-logical function] integration,
between turning attention...

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~Every Day~ 
(The Minuet) 


You can always spread  His  Love  to 
To all around 
Around bring  Hope
Hope,  Peace,  love  show 

Love heals the aching heart that hurts 
Hurts...

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The Daily Star Thursday issue...

announces Summer Solstice 2024
regarding purr ray zing planetary earthlings
paying obeisance to god/goddess of the sun 
Thursday, June twentieth
at 4:51 Post Meridian
Eastern standard time
will find Earth's North Pole tilted
closest toward sun. 

This...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch



Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch

Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to...

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~ He's  With   You  ~
 (Trinet)



~O~


  Today   and
 Everyday  want
 To wish you  a  great   day
 With lots of Love and  Blessings
...

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In sandy Egypt lived three men
In ancient days when pharaohs reigned
The kingdom of the pyramids,
Osiris and that Isis’ den,
Whom everyone worships and heeds,
Or at least doing so they feigned,
And those gods too blessed them and...

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The daily star Tuesday issue...

announces Summer Solstice 2023
regarding ray zing planetary earthlings

Wednesday, June twenty first
at 10:57 Ante Meridian
Eastern standard time
will find Earth's North Pole tilted
closest toward sun. This demarcates

most daylight hours of the year for
people...

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Where do we think all this economic and politically empowering
cooperative
nutritional
organically luscious imagination
and ecologically exegetical orthopraxis
started?

George Lakoff speaks of strictly straight stern paternalistic God the Universalist Fathers,
vertically Winning over an otherwise Loser, yet highly competitive, ecopolitical...

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A lovely outcome for our recreational journey,
or Way
or Truths,
or LoveLives,
whichever you prefer to pick out
from among this graced array,
tells a multi-generational creation story
of cosmic sacred ecology
and Earth's evolution revolutions,
drawing on and with 
scientific deductive knowledge
both...

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This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on...

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