Long Ringed Poems

Sappho fragment #155
translation by Michael R. Burch 

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

*

Sappho fragment #156
translation by Michael R. Burch 

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems V

Poetry
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found you—shivering, bare.

They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems X

These are early poems written in my teens and twenties.

Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...

once starlight
languished
in your hair...

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret,
a pain
I chose to bear...

unleash
the torrent
of your hair...

and show me
once...

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Poems about Poems III

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...

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LOVE POEMS V

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch, about life, the dream of love, virtue, a first kiss, a first crush, the birth of a first relationship, the joy of a first love...

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I'm working on this Systems Theory

All existing formal religious traditions
and informal spiritual experience 
of Great Sacred EcoLogical Transitions
[e.g. Holocene to 
Green AnthroScene;
HolySpirit to
Whole Holonic Natural Communion Systems]

Originally,
through our divine monotheistic
and/or polytheistic
and/or atheistic naturalistic branches
shared as...

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Pellucid pachyderms wade across
the purpling River Manjees
and Tozzath watches from the bank, 
the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud,
his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias,
whose lacey petals flutter
like the wings of long-dead...

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I got friggin heebie jeebies

Cuz buzzards circle o'er me
eyeing these lovely bones prithee
id est Roy L. T. Canard, Si
hence impossible mission 
to be lovey dove vee.

Vague remembrances of dream  
which recurred with frequency
transfixed by...

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Find your way
from brain stemmed
seed tree infancy
of glorious humanity
history

Find your way
From correct diverse limbic resolutions
back to shared soul temporal-health 
co-acclimating diverse struggling issues,
nutritionally resilient production
and root to branch to reroute transportation
and lack of wealth concentrating...

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The old man stood;elbows resting on the old stone wall
Wistfully he gazed over the snow laden field,
Watching the sheep nibble on bales of hay,
He thought back remembering his working day.

In his leather like work hardened...

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How might Earth's underground narrative
of a sacred Tree
speak most profoundly
of old growth economic
and political
environmental trauma?

A question I forgot to ask
when I was younger
and more disabled
and WhiteMale monotheistic

How might even Republican Red MotherTrees
avoid secularized Self-serving
by Capitalizing...

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Gotcha! Once respectable haute cuisine thief Sue She...,
a septuagenarian renown for his trademark prank
to steal himself into a neighboring house,
and prepare an elaborate meal
unsuspectedly nabbed gorging
(ala man versus food
Adam Montgomery Richman fame
Brooklyn, New York boy)
at...

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For some enchanted evenings...

The following scenario imagined
after the hoopla of
Democratic National Convention miracle workers
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
trumpeted politically wholesome zeal,
and achieved advancement
propelling them ahead
in the race to the White House.

Unlike the hangdog expression of...

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Life 101 was taught to me in an old mansion in inner-city Chicago.                      ...

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My Goddess of Home Furnishings 

I watched you floating in your usual way, always in song..,
though you could not see me.
From between the racks of Men's clothing..,  
at the department store where we both...

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We're now in the year 6555, and I am feeling happy and so alive,
Above, sunshine pours like honey, as along the oceanside I drive.

Wind whips my hair around, beneath skies a deep sparkling blue,
Like the...

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Can blackwater lilies 
sing forth sonnets 
of daylight and 
unsung those 
cacophonous notes 
of omen, which 
rhymed with 
sombre elixir 
of spruce rivulets and 
veiled your crimson 
touch of life, 
in eons of unforgivable 
death?...

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These are lullabies I have written as poems. 

Midnight Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

I.
A measureless rhythm rules the night—
few have heard it,
but I have shared it,
and its secret is mine.

To put it into words
is as to...

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Sappho's Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call
while the dew-laden lilies lie
listening, 
glistening...
this is their night, the first night of fall.			

Son, tonight, a woman awaits...

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Odyssey from Africa 15c (Southland, continued...)

Being rich in skill and talent
He soon gained the feel and measure 
Of the boomerang’s employment 
Sent it arching near the treetops 
 
Then returning where it started
As the king...

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Pointed Art
Michael R. Burch

The point of art is that
there is no point.
A grinning, quick-dissolving cat
from Cheshire
must have told you that.

The point of art is this—
the hiss
of Cupid’s bright bolt, should it miss,
is bliss
compared to Truth’s...

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“Whoso List to Hunt” is a famous early English sonnet written by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) in the mid-16th century. 

Whoever Longs to Hunt
by Sir Thomas Wyatt
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Whoever longs to hunt,...

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Note: the "dd" in Welsh names is pronounced "th."

Merlyn's Birth
by Michael R. Burch

I was born in Gwynedd,
or not born, as some men claim,
and the Zephyr of Caer Myrrdin
gave me my name.

My father was Madog Morfeyn
but...

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These are my modern English translations of ancient Greek epigrams by Anacreon from the Anacreontea. 

Here he lies in state tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet Ares cares not, neither does War relent.
—Anacreon, loose translation/interpretation by...

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The rain began to fall steady and slow.The fall rains that ushered in the real drop in temporatures.

Having assembled her pine boughed canopy to dissipate and scatter the plume and the partial entrance covering the...

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