Long Sagging Poems

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...

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the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers III




Success
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

We need our children to keep us humble
between toast and marmalade;

there is no time for a ticker-tape parade
before bed, no award, no bright statuette

to be delivered...

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Dream of Infinity
by Michael R. Burch

Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then...

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Poems about Children IV

Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the...

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THIS WORLD OF DEW

This world? 
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane's bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last? 
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dewdrops beading grass-blades
die before...

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     by how many badbyes can you measure the length of your day

                 first comes...

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                             Brahman Nemesis

    ...

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His words stung me, as the cries from the maelstrom seem to retort
Their scattered, foreign words and wails retching their say
I listened, almost mesmerized,
Pulverized

“Come,” Said he,
With threatening authority

Upwards, higher than the balcony from which we...

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PRINCESS DIANA POEMS

Fairest Diana: an Epitaph for Princess Diana
by Michael R. Burch

Fairest Diana, princess of dreams,
born to be loved and yet distant and lone,
why did you linger?so solemn, so lovely?
an orchid ablaze in a crevice...

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It’s Friday afternoon. Anna, Lisa, Leong and I are sitting around our common room - sagging actually - after a long day.
“I need a break,” I said, “now’s the time - today, this day -...

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What is love?
A sea of nonexistence
both tranquil and calamitous
where the mind
does not dare enter.
(Rumi, M. Mafi, "Day By Day", p. 120, 2014, Hampton Roads)

What is timeless synergy?
Our sea of coexistence
both confluent and dissonant
where blind consciousness
seldom...

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My parents had both passed and I felt orphaned, alone --
Although I was married and lived hours away with a family of my own.
And today was a day I had dreaded for months
Silently traveling the...

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Inevitable death defines afterlife - deux

Flinty stones figuratively rolling inside
whooping out that primal 
binaural beat of your drum
ma mind haphazardly 
ricocheting axon to neuron
inducing inxs of chaos 
wreaking entropy beheld 
by beauty and the beast
enveloping...

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On a never lonely street was  where I grew up
There  we played from morning  till dusk
 Then we woke up neat and  free, but back home laced with dust
Slightly dirtier than...

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

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MY HOME TOWN
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS	
Time moves on never stands still
It changes the outcome no matter the will
Of the dreamers who hold on to and then
Each moment happens once then never again
I had a feeling this...

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This foggy sky
darkly and relentlessly rains
especially for an early May morning.

He is not prepared for darkness
seeping in from new-born leaves,
not yet full grown into this year's tree-lacing dress,
soaking in from saturated soil,
slurping into his complexly...

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and my CNN opened on a breaking news on a dark street in Libya, about Nigerians chained to be sold as slaves.
the television slide and roved over,
their tears shattered and their blood spoke of pains...

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The children are running wild, running rapid;
Like runAway children disrespecting children;
Some of them being heathen;
come one come all
Here comes the authority, the law;
Lead to slaughter liken sheep;
Where are these rule breakers;
WHERE ARE THE VILLAGERS-
 -WE...

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A few months ago I went by the 
cemetery where you lay
I have been meaning to stop in 
but you know how life gets.

It was late September
chilly and overcast
the clouds were thick and
hung heavy above...

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Today,
there are no rubber ducks
or mother's marigold skirts
to hide behind
as we once did.

In their place,
lurking dark and hoary,
a bathtub mist
updrafts thick with loose spores,
and mildew veins
sprawling
behind caulked-over creases.

The day,
shrinking away heavy with time,
as a body
sagging
into
water.

Even...

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There were images the grey man could not see 
Did not want to see, in all probability

Walking by the glass doors and windows of modern stores
No warmth of being within their cold crisp alloy frames
Where...

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POEMS ABOUT POOL SHARKS

Shark
by Michael R. Burch

They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light...

I am not of them,
as I...

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POEMS ABOUT SCIENCE 4: BIRTH/EVOLUTION

Simultaneous Flight
by Michael R. Burch

*The number of possible connections [brain] cells can make exceeds the number of particles in the universe. — Gerald Edelman, 1972 Nobel Prize winner for physiology and...

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