Long Scrawl Poems

"The Payload" 

The payload 
came crashing down
like rain expelled
from the fat belly 
of a ruinous pregnant cloud 
bilious with buxom promise

it came crashing down 
like school fish released 
from the tight confines
of a course rope...

Read More

LOVE POEMS III by Michael R. Burch

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch about passion, desire, lust, sex, dating, relationships, devotion and marriage. 


Violets
by Michael R. Burch

Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to...

Read More

Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch

Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows.
And there you go, skipping your way to school.
And here we are, drifting apart
like untethered balloons.

Here I am, creating "art,"
chanting in shadows,
pale as the crinoline moon,
ignoring your face.

There...

Read More

R.I.P.
by Michael R. Burch

When I am lain to rest
and my soul is no longer intact, 
but dissolving, like a sunset
diminishing to the west...

and when at last
before His throne my past
is put to test
and the demons...

Read More

Ali's Song
by Michael R. Burch
for Muhammad Ali

They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river,...

Read More

November 13th, 2021 - Happy eighty sixth birthday
to my long deceased mom...
Harriet Harris née Kuritsky

My mother succumbed to a terminal illness
two score minus three orbitz passed away
no matter she fought tooth and nail
to keep ovarian/uterine...

Read More

Each day’s (we’re alive) one more leaf that has fallen
from tree (Fate’s collusion?), our edifice grown
with the help of light garnered from sources outside
of our provenance, moisture, and minerals,
‘cheap’s’ turned to ‘gold,’ not by Chemistry’s...

Read More

#I was raised seeing images of a White Male, with a reddish beard, blue eyes or medium brown, depending on the Artist, as well as my neighborhood church along with numerous other entities; I would...

Read More

Written words
Lines and verses
Poetry
Fragments of an author's soul
Frozen ink on paper
Entombed emotions
Imprisoned ideas
Trapped thoughts
Sentient silhouettes
Paper phantoms
Paper ghosts

School during a civil war
In six easy steps
A place of learning and reason
A propaganda soup cauldron
A refuge of normality...

Read More

      


      As I fall into the buzzing altar of heavy 
metal shifting sand, maw, swirling sheets, 
illness drools plus plus halcyon?
drawn too many wrinkles...

Read More

The darkness, now descending, floods the city as it dies
while shadows lurk in legions 'neath the looming Evil Eye.
Its frozen stare envelops all, it penetrates and pries,
denouncing loathed dissenters to the keepers in the sky....

Read More

Written: April 27, 2024

                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Seraphic, sibilant wisdom,
    a grace-gorged vista,
...

Read More

The noblemen control the pen, indeed they own the farm,
but nonetheless exude finesse (and need I mention charm?)
with revenue to sate the few, exulting arm in arm;
for all the rest, they wish the best and...

Read More

             Her adorned stars, crackling overhead 
                ...

Read More

Swoon Song
by Michael R. Burch

In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.

Who I am and why I came,
I do not...

Read More

Its so hard to be different in many ways unique, fresh, oblique
Confronting not conforming, defying not complying
Requires courage, conviction, confidence to be out there upfront emboldened.
Shedding the safe garments of compliance, the safe hat and...

Read More

When I was a young woman
Just embarking on my own life
My grandmother departed and
Left me a special gift – 

A small, delicately framed
Faded black and white photograph
Of a long foot worn path running
Through a tall...

Read More

Time To Shower...When Pervasive Odor Of Ureic Acid

Doth strongly waft, sting,
and nauseate about me
olfactory nose flying zone
bombarding cilia of
nasal passageway analogous
to displeasure wrought by

crashing, deafening, exploding,
ear splitting xylophone,
also synonymous isolated like
barenaked lady within
remote location of...

Read More

Skylights warn and warm where acorns drip. The slight angle of acidity in the air can be measured accurately with a ruler or the nib of a ball point pen. Ball point pens are not...

Read More

well … you were there - you saw it all
          you witnessed while I tried to scrawl
         ...

Read More

World War 1

I scrawl these visions
in the light of exploding shells
and the grey sleep of a million corpses,
making my pencil the last witness 
to the moments between life and death.

Truth shall guide my trembling hand
across...

Read More

When Humanity Cries


Message in my angry pen
Peeps yearning for release
To scrawl on white walls
Venom from a ‘ball’ sting,

  Bane in an irate pen
  From a daring ken.

I yearn to hug The Hague
With stumps...

Read More

Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they’d crawled (with others that they’d brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities...

Read More

World War 1

I scrawl these visions
in the light of exploding shells
and the grey sleep of a million corpses,
making my pencil the last witness 
to the moments between life and death.

Truth shall guide my trembling hand
across...

Read More

The Trojan of our heroic struggle
The heroic struggle against chains
Which beckons with pains
That tends to make us insane
For we are already stained 
As they offer us disdain
Nowhere but in the scorchy rain

From the cradle lipping...

Read More