Long Robed Poems

Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common...

Read More

Poems about Poems (II)

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss?
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves...

Read More

Poems about Adam, Eve, Lucifer

Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone, unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma...



Outcasts
by...

Read More

I melt into the plural sky
its rippling tableaus of tomorrow
underneath open light waves 
see-saws the labyrinth
like Delphi tendrils crossing channels 
all the changing faces played
automatic, embedded in misty consort 
with Hyde-Lees and Yeats 
love-crushed oracles
ghostwriting...

Read More

Various Heresies 6

Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield...

Read More

(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")

Human hatchery

Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete...

Read More

.                          NOW

Well, GI Jack is welcome back, he left his...

Read More

“The God Complex”



His face imprinted 
hidden under layers of ink
he whispers his words

like a haunting breeze
dust blown off the pages
towards the back of their minds

once-in-a-while 
reminding them of stories 
they are eventually, all souls

book-marked 
tagged...

Read More

Poems about Poets VII

Gallant Knight
by Michael R. Burch

for Alfred Dorn and Anita Dorn

Till you rest with your beautiful Anita,
rouse yourself, Poet; rouse and write.
The world is not ready for your departure,
Gallant Knight.

Teach us to sing...

Read More

"The Pages"

Missing all those years
like a page you could turn, 
a book you could throw casually aside, 
to be eternally forgotten in electric shady libraries;
at some point you turned around, 
and remembered, what you long...

Read More

(alternately titled: idolizing childhood's end
today April 25th, 2021
generates elusive warm treasured memories).

Akin to significance my eldest sister
felt toward her “Willies” –
(totally tubular fuzzy bendable contrivances
analogous to an outsize pipe cleaner)
until she became a tweener
my Matty...

Read More

I dread the United States presidential 2024 outcome...

Whereby yours truly presages and doth abhor
nothing short of an imminent civil war
dwarfing insurrection on January 6, 2021
oddly enough even reducing
ordinary decibels to a mute whisper
madding crowd trumpeting...

Read More

Now that Crimson Fire was gone
Fire Eagle needed to gain experience.
For over ten years he travelled the lands
helping people, learning from many other druids.
One day he knew he would be called up on to
take the...

Read More

Thomas was walking through his favorite part of the forest,
where the overturned giant oak tree has been a sitting spot
for him since childhood, the part of the forest that is lit
a little bit thanks to...

Read More

THE CHIMNEY
The once fine air, refreshens with dust
Between the village horizon and crest
Since the sailing of a death chemical chimney.

Young green plants seedlings growing on slope
Are left to sip these  carcinogenic dusts, sapling
And entwined...

Read More

An Audience With THE KING

Many times during my walk with Him over the years, I have cried and prayed
and sought my Lord’s face, my Father’s face and asked Him, oh if HE would
just pick me...

Read More

"Motherland"

The “Removed”,
Charlestons across the keyboard,

fingers have a personality and a mind 
of their own, don’t you agree?

the stalwart mind converses with the frivolous fingers 
its stark increduality, considers All above All

they’re incorrigible, those lithe fingers,
like...

Read More

Translation of Marcel Moreau's " A Paris " by T. Wignesan

IN PARIS

Paris bores me no end without you
My heart weighted down with melancholia
The spleen given over to asthenia
Empties its own sense of loss on to...

Read More

Taming a tropical topical tree? Taking a trunk? Telling a tailor? Traversing a tale? Many ideas. Much like the ideological dramas of a beach front. Wavelength of winds. Movements if the tides. Coconuts can jump...

Read More

"Drip, drip" said the mildew-stained stone cellar walls of St. Peter's cathedral,
Where a goblet of wine dripped into a priest dressed in robes violet and medieval.

Down into the crypts beneath the church's alter he had...

Read More

A mirror never reveals  
fallen secrets sewn with soulful sequins;  
time unmutes raven melodies within,  
tawny tunes of truth~
   I once spoke in colorful dialects.  
Now, I trust just...

Read More

I was a pleasant, conscientious librarian, whose world consisted of books,
As a world of fragrant beauty, can be found in the glossy, honeyed nooks.

Although it was pleasant work and appealing, I was not so very...

Read More

These are villanelles by Michael R. Burch and and villanelle-like poems...


Villanelle: Trump’s Retribution Resolution
by Michael R. Burch

My New Year’s resolution?
I require your money and votes,
for *you* are *my* retribution.

May I offer you dark-skinned scapegoats
and bigger...

Read More

Sappho Translations by VI Michael R. Burch

Sappho, fragment 121
translation by Michael R. Burch

1.
As a friend you're great,
but you need a much younger bedmate.

2.
Although you're very dear to me,
please don't be silly!
You need a much younger...

Read More

Sappho Translations IX


Sappho, fragment 17
translation by Michael R. Burch

Hear me, Queen Hera, as your delightful festival nears,
you to whom the sons of Atreus performed vows,
those dazzling kings who did such amazing things,
first at Troy, then...

Read More