Long Resistance Poems

"Blue Sky, Why?"

stories speak to us.
inside our heart 
is crying.

Blue Sky, Why?

why do children
holding sunflowers
watch their parents die

why do sweet children,
now war torn, 
some the battle's orphans,
daily lose their lives

lying in their sick beds
bombed in...

Read More

Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus...

Read More

Salve
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9-11

The world is unsalvageable ...
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as...

Read More

Still wrestling with impasse to contentment

Dispense sing with fidelity blithely agog
just me and mine dark shadow 
slinking along outer limits of 
the edge of night doth blog
passivity, the path 
of least resistance ohm my dog,
shocking...

Read More

Thanksgiving, 1971,
a parachute pilgrim approaches Northwest Flight 305
as Dan Cooper, anonymous businessman,  anarchist airborne, 
black suit, black sunglasses, a black tie
and a black briefcase broaching black motives,
Portland to Seattle, prison or criminal pantheon, 
before...

Read More

The greatest performance of my life.  
Howard’s proud piece de resistance award  on Poetry Nook for my magnum opus “Rush Amid The Rapids” in their daily member section.
After endless hours of toil, tribulation,...

Read More

This is the third time
I've read Beyond Religion:
Ethics
[non-sectarian, non-partisan, non-violent]
for A (not "The") Whole World
[ZeroZenZone Universe, psychological and politically eco-logical].

In the second, of two, sections,
the Dalai Lama discusses,
in most excruciating therapeutic detail,
emotional positive v negative...

Read More

Resistance On The Iberian Peninsula

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity),”
Scream French revolutionists as they guillotine monarchists heads, 1
Then crown Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of France, 2
Who commands the French forces in wars raged across Europe.

The Grande...

Read More

Wrestling with impasse to contentment

Dispense sing with fidelity blithely agog
just me and mine dark shadow 
slinking along the edge of night doth blog
passivity, the path of least resistance ohm my dog,
shocking voltage surges an emphatic...

Read More

At once she paid a visit. In her colorful dress, so revealing and appealingly suited to her slendern torso. I to gaze the door way, mine heart pounded viciously,  a death knock. I was...

Read More

Headlights messaged through midnight windows 
Curtainless glass unable to subdue the urgency 
Car obtained in street nearby was theirs temporarily
Three hour drive to ship leaving island next morning

Two sixteen year old girls barely registered surprise...

Read More

1.

                                  ...

Read More

[If you’re a glutton for punishment, you
Can find ‘Mad Molly Shaw’ using the poems
Tag at top of screen]
              ****

Mad Molly Shaw wasn’t...

Read More

"Artificial Iris"


Orwell was lurking in the background, somewhere;
the dream was eerily familiar, 
the words and their meanings, read in Syntax,
once read between pages of hardcopy in school 
were aptly ignored - 

however, 
our Overlords were...

Read More

“This will come to an end now,” Rian demanded!  Joulupukki nudged Dyndoeth and glanced at the crystals in each corner of the ceiling. He saw the elf begin to tense.  He also noticed...

Read More

The World has been playing a game
Oh what a shame
The world has been playing a game
This is insane
Leaders come and leaders go
Leaving me to continue the show
Leaders come and leaders go
Repeating the show of long...

Read More

I don't know what came over me that day - an instant of weakness after years of resistance, I suppose.

My beaming spouse leads me, a dog on a short leash, into the forbidden citadel, the...

Read More

Oh Hanna. 

The sinking of the USS Stefan wood. 

Oh Hanna 
I want to take you to Montana. 
We can camp out by the springs we will go and see the way oil is founding...

Read More

Before we had the LeftBrain eclipse word,
circa 1200s on back through space and time,
we had great sacred transformational co-arisings,
re-alignment as BlackHole icons
of ancient eco-alignments,
Yang solar resilience 
with Yin lunar resistance.

Before we had dualistic separation,
from sunlight's...

Read More

World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems II - Bertolt Brecht



The Burning of the Books
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned, 
teams of dull oxen hauled...

Read More

Recluse by dint of circumstance

Proud anonymous troglodytes 
forerunners of mine
confronted threats less horrific
than forty fifth commander in chief
of United States of America.

He/him (matted hair, ratty, scrawny, 
and tetchy ugly villain)   
scurried into dark...

Read More

8. Transformation

Yielding to those who have mastered the art
Of grasping one's place in existence's grand scheme
Life’s constant challenges never depart
But humble diligence will grow the dream

In passing from childhood to adulthood
Innocence to responsibility
Firm new role...

Read More

Healing Win/Lose EgoNomial Intent

We belong together
Through all kinds of colonizing corporate weather,
We belong creolizing together.

So sings my mitochondrial DNA
when I listen deeply
to all prior matriarchal regenerations
speaking in still 
soft 
timeless win/win voices

Especially about polycultural outcome...

Read More

There sits behind deep forests hidden,
A sight to behold, place of all sins ridden,
Where the great rivers give life and churn,
A thousand diamonds and the trees sing
Along with the wind, ruled by the great King.

Generous...

Read More

That's queer!
said transculturing Curiosity,
peering out Her sacred big-boxed window
panes of misty white fog
gently covering her view
of upstream tiding River's
mysterious grey
reverse time flow

Sometimes,

OK, really too often,
I could use more courageous exercise

But, Other times
I'm more content, inviting...

Read More