Long Rusted Poems

Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

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Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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Poems about Dogs

This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my...

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State of the Art (IV)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...”  — W. ...

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Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp...

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Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is...

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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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There was a glimpse of time unknown to man
The things none may ever describe
All wrapped within this wall of thoughts
For if a moment of my thoughts are clear
They are not my thoughts at all
Never again...

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The Old Dark House

This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All...

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This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All Hallows’ Eve
before the...

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This tale of “The Old Dark House” is one that’s replete with a
most horrid sense of pure evil and macabre, and is worth being
retold each year during the deep-dark hours of All Hallows’ Eve
before the...

Read More

I was so anxious to get away but I did not realize what was on the way
I got a standing ticket because all the tickets have been sold out some on the black market, others...

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How can something be amazing and terrifying at the same time? 
I have a wife and three kids
no, wait that's my imagination running wild
I have a girlfriend, my world of a month now
but I've chased...

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Dissolving death
                                 ...

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Nylon waste is often akin to a brushed out stable, manger, or stall. But brushing the carpet is often a resemblance of a swirling cloud of dust and tobacco shards and tobacco shards are not...

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For so long I have fought my monsters in the war lands. For so long I’ve been by myself in the wake of my chaos. Others tried to stand beside but shortly fell or shortly...

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But we of the Three Tribes live undiscovered 
   In the reverberating stillness of the 
 Three Gorges...
And are therefore unknown to the warring mongol;
    His impassioned lusts -- his...

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please tell me ...

what happened?
what dire damage have i wrought?
what did i do to ruin it, that friendship, rare?
you once knew me better than most ...

my darkness didn't frighten you, didn't rattle,
you sighted those demons...

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( Dark Doubles Tribute To Poetic Those Gifts Given By Raven And Master Poe )

(1.)

Under Bright Bloody-Red Midnight Moon, Raven Plays

Yes, those horrific screams, came from below
those frosty chills, born from eerie glow
echoes bouncing off...

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Ohh I could have sat with my heart 
--elevated with dribbled echoes-- 
ahhhhhh until it yet exhaled the tarnished seams 
capturing only the quiet current lapping
and soaking dirty steel embankment	
along the river’s edge beneath the...

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They are conflicted haunted images from black and white photos of America 1933, when there was no place left to run. 

It was the hunger of people lined up, scraps of food ladled out, the...

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In the park, I’d been all day
Reading all my time away
On a park bench did I sit
Until the sky became twilit

As light for reading began to wane
I heard the tapping of a cane.
And looking up,...

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A Hallows Eve of trick or treating, elaborate costumes, candy eating,
       Lantern’s dimming upon nightfall, locked doors marks next year’s meeting.

My recalling of my day and for the next...

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I spin, faster and faster…    
losing control, I am a propeller rising.
Once, you were my mystery to solve,
my gift to unwrap -
my challenge, my highest vista to climb.
You lifted me to your...

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