Long Scrawled Poems

Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

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A Stolen Memory
A Mirthful Chorus
By Sy Roth 


We surrounded him 
Asked to let go.
She stared at the misshapen face,
Unshaven sandpapery skin 
Eyelids a tabula rasa
Fluttery sere skin
And we could see the humor blossoming in his...

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Poems about Things that Break I
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

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Where do we come in
					in medias res  not knowing nor caring when
doesn’t everybody pine being number one we leave behind our lives in pages  pictures  or else make for images of what...

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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 . ....

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From the window of my chic city office, lost in thought, I gaze out.
The pedestrians scurry like frenzied ants below, caught up in their bustling state of holiday insanity.
In his haste to cross the street...

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Tell me, my friend,  
does infinity not unsettle your reason,  
or is it a comfort—to believe it meaningless?  

Look beyond the rust of your disbelief—  
this isn’t the frostbitten dogma you...

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Erlenkönig pulled the chair out beside Aisling's and sat on the side of the table.  A large, luxuriant and ornate chair headed the end of the table,
several places down from where he sat...

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The tale below was carved one night
upon the stone, by candlelight
...most won’t believe, but some just might
.........most won’t believe, but some just might



            ...

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Self help addict needles unsuspecting reader 

Expounded late today April 27th, 2023
since being written
countless years ago
maybe a baker's dozen
as thee doodling cock doth crow 
scouting about for carrion 
scavenging for dead animals 
and rooting about...

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I. The Hour of Approach

The poem I was writing refused to end—  
it kept writing me.  
Blood didn't ink these lines—  
the ink bled me.  
Each stanza a hidden-hematoma  
across...

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In the copper-clad cradle of time
where gears whir fugues to forgotten dreams.....
the fog—a somnolent specter—drifts.....
veiling the calculus of progress
a manuscript etched by steam and soot.

Hark The hiss of pistons proclaims
a triumph—or perhaps a dirge—
for we...

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(Fictional, but based on the real experience of one of my close friends who lost her daughter in an accident)

 As I sat on my desk,
Hurrying with my pent up work,
A scrap of paper, left...

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(alternatively titled: tardy duff fender of assertiveness,
especially after adjusting following insanity clause
affixed with rubber baby-buggy bumpers)

Methinks I nearly got snookered
courtesy CVS employee at store number 7569
(address: 1206 North Gravel Pike,
Zieglerville, Pennsylvania 19492)
September ninth, two thousand...

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You know, I could be Kipling
channel a fancy humoring tale
have all of you begging of lyrics more gracious
such as this, a mystic masterpiece made for this generation
Come on, dabble me with praise
put a paint brush...

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Mandated this faux gremlin explorer
(alias Cliff Ford) donning reinforced
rubber baby buggy bumpers to dodge
any errant wild jaguar, ram, thunder bird,
bee in blue bonnet hood lamb, et cetera

and/or any cowl screen Fascia hissed
dee fender must be...

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Wanton women of Whitechapel
Desperate and destitute
Weakened from want
Shrunken stomachs barren of bread
Dying from disease in dingy dosshouses
Selling themselves on the streets for shillings
to buy beer, a bed for the night
or a bonny new bonnet
to enable...

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What is it that makes us human ? It's not something you can program, you can't put it into a micro chip. It's the strength of the human heart; the difference between us and machines....

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The House on Lake Maggiore

The house on Lake Maggiore was reality, a physical truth, 
my imagination became the artist.

The day has become  a deckchair, gently folding itself up
as my walk leads me into a...

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The healthier we become the more ways we find to make ourselves sick
Hypochondriac fits of politics 
Diet pills McDonalds Happy Meals
Hypnagogic images make up the news
Cumulus clouds full of debris from the local avenues 
Deeper...

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Or Bored With The Rings

Carved into a tree in Mirkwood:
Watch out for Treebeard, girls. He's fast!

On a restroom wall in the Shire:
Hoo boy! that Bilbo Baggins,
I'm so tired of His Naggins.

 
Scribbled on the pink...

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Why I keep a low profile i.e. namely remain invisible

Alternately titled -
dear readers ye each saddled as exegete
to make sense little known excerpt
referencing obscure passage printed
calligraphy style groovy and neat

found scrawled in book of Matthew
which...

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Because Her Heart Is Tender, for Beth
by Michael R. Burch
 
She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget”
dove-white on her car’s window (though the wren,
because its heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to...

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(prior to tha ode dee us political stink sans hillary rodham clinton, i scrawled out this poem. her likelihood to grasp to political mantle than considerably greater than  fourteen months when another official will...

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In the basement of our house
Was a workshop 
Of gray tools 
And the smell of 3-in-1 oil
There under the steady glare
Of florescent lighting
My father
Worked.

Whenever he called me downstairs
It was to talk 
About something important
Or a...

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