Long Retch Poems

Cleansings
by Michael R. Burch

Walk here among the walking specters. Learn
inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave
to bone this tightly if their hearts believe
that God is good, and never mind the Urn.

A lentil and a bean might...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems (I)

These are poems about World War II and the Holocaust, which is also called the Shoah in Hebrew. 



Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust
by Michael R. Burch

I...

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Upon this date he spoke no more of the preceding moments, 
Tearing and hurling insult upon insult
In several directions, his tongue whipped and scorched me,
And he waited relentlessly to see the spark in my eyes...

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On the canvas of a cold, grey, winter sky,
In large black letters above the Iron Gate,
Read the message: "Arbeit Macht Frei".
A shrewdly sinister, propagandist lie,
Designed to deceive all of our eventual fate.
This was the very...

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It confused Anton, he found no more leads,
no more connections between the two deaths,
he doubted himself, were they connected?
He missed something and could not see it yet.

But then his chief came, raging and angry,
said that...

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What was said by death, I shall write in a mystery. And full of trouble as a shadow, such as one. And clean thing our of the number of his. He cannot pass for his...

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Murk Rammer froze as he felt the nuzzle
of a snub-nosed thirty-eight’s deadly muzzle.
Louis The Retch poked it into his back.
“The jig’s up, Rammer. I ain’t cuttin’ no slack.”

Murk had been tricked by a double-crossing dame,
alias...

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.
A whale in a pail is far more active in a gale or in copious amounts of hail. Putting money into sharks is a shifty act involving the shuffling of coats in cloakrooms. And clown...

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The virile Knight gives evil eye to all 
And champion to all who missed the call, 
A long forgotten conflict ripped our soul 
The virile Knight defends the final toll. 

(In a hole 
Where the...

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Small And Large, Black And Brown Cats And Dogs
A Concrete Poem


 be                       ...

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EVOL UT I ON ... NO 1 TU LOVE
(The Eden Agenda III)


I have loved most everyone, yet so few have loved me back.

So much good I have done, but suspicions aroused, they attack.
How I so...

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The Crushed Skulls

the crushed skulls

and the 

torn-off legs

and the 

single shots piercing countless heads


women, men, children
young, old, everyone just a human being

when will we tire of the senseless killing which we keep on impotently seeing


the...

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You know not why you're now here, 
just that you are bound by fear- 
(and a couple incised wires) 
watching me, enticed with pliers. 
Naked, cold, taught, and crying, 
you can't move, although you're trying. 
All stretched out, upon your stomach, 
odors...

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Brothers Levi, Jordan, Matthews, Joe and Jedden, 
You were sheer shocked as did Sister Hussein
That even this day we can still adjure, argue, advocate,
And advance active activism for the rule of law stolen,
As did Dr...

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Southgate and Sterling discourse on the disturbing. Alarming' The focus of classes through
Which much chattering passes, in meme graph and drama a gasp'orama of division's incision draconian Intrusion, reality never meeting; insanity tries our reason,...

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one thing you have to learned is to let go all of the frustration learned to let it flow 
letting go is not the easy thing you know but as you grow you start to...

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Compassion sings in velvet vibrato violin strokes, thrumming upon
an ivory frame suffused in dulcimer tones of need.

Half deaf we echo broken words, sharp jagged phrases, defining
the borders of empathy, binding the reach of the heart.

Compassion...

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Quotes from the 1960 movie, Pollyanna:

Pollyanna: Why don't you come out of the front door like normal people?
Jimmy: They won't let us. I can come out anytime I want with my tree.
Pollyanna: You could also...

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Winston has passed on...

She heard him rummaging, turning on taps
opening the fridge, you know, stuff like that
removing her coat, a black felt-like hat
she set the long table and stroked her sad cat
then calling out as...

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Written: June 24, 2023
______________________________________________________________

Sadness erupts; who is suffering sails?
In the depths where hope once dwelled.
A vessel that was gone, love's dying exhale
Lost by the cruel hand of fate, they were felled.

Surf cracks at the damaged...

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Eternal sleep does not now assuage me, mistress,
I dine on your living flesh, 
With no thought of saving, storing, salvaging
The little evils you possess

I dare you to try to live after I pronounce you dead!...

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A Jerky Reverie

Where is the moon just now?
The light shining from the sun
appears, to have blotted it out.
The stark darkness of a motionless 
void, where atomic debris not seen,
passes
 through it, violating solid state.
Harmonious discontent,...

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My identical twin and I have little in common, yet we have this one thing.
In order to start cleaning we have to watch Hoarders, a TV show with zing.
It shows women whose houses are cluttered...

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Deep within my blackened soul
This dark nightmare grows
From putrid bile so foul

Where bloodied carnage grows
Festering in a venomous pit
Where only my demon goes

The bloodsuckers of the night
Scorn my very existence
Cowering as from holy light

The lupine...

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Unfinished Nightmare

Mouth agape
trash can lid arches limply
its hinged spine
like that of  partial paragraphs
clinging
broken
yet refusing to let go

How gauze-like
the yellowed reflection
staring back from shattered temper-enhanced mirror
clinging also
defying decayed adhesive
refusing like me to accept
the dry erosion...

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