Long Sculptors Poems

Brilliant writers
have recommended to younger students,
to only write if they cannot live without doing so.

Elder successful icons of artistic expression,
dance,
voice,
drama,
sculptors
have similarly advised apprentices,
do not do as I have done
unless you could do naught else.

But what...

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  “Sweet is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,
so long as ruin and dishonour reign ;
to bear nought, to feel nought, is my great gain ;
then wake me not, speak in an...

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We, the generation of '50,
Time-travelers with stardust in our hair, with memories planted in pockets,
Rooted in decades embraced by change, souls adorned with the dawn of the post-war world.
We spun on the carousel of the...

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My esteemed Rinpoche
repeatedly impresses upon me
Our humane democratic vocation
to become an enlightened individual.

Which sounds like a polyculturing lot,
for absorbent 
co-acclimating residents and guests
of Earth's cooperative green/blue hermitage
To accomplish 
in solitude,
in one semi-lifetime,
demi-deathtime.

While this seems ambiguously...

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Women look at us with unsettling eyes, undulating like the sea in a summer storm,
Hiding within their depths a universe of dreams, entwined with longing and starry glimmers,
We wonder, what do we desire, to be...

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I would like to hear and see
how and why you live,
when and where you prefer to die.

I would like to touch and taste
who and what you think and feel
is your greenest dreamed sanctuary
without imagined ultra-violet...

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My birthday gift, to me.
In prose 
   This night of November 27th , in our year of the lord, two thousand and one I decided to treat myself to a living birthday present,...

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These are my modern English translations of sonnets by the French poet Stephane Mallarme.

The Tomb of Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Transformed into himself by Death, at last,
the Bard unsheathed his Art’s...

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Under the vault of eternal stars, where strings of light sing the ballads of infinity,
Two kinds of people are born, woven into the fabric of the cosmic destiny,
Most people are those who cannot think, only...

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America is immune to all appeals, a metal colossus that does not know the echo of the heart,
A nation ensnared in chains of concrete and glass, above the fields of forgotten dreams,
A cacophony of shadows...

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During our lives we make a lot friends, but as time goes by we all seem to move on in different directions. We get older, get married, build a family, and create a new life....

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Our steps echo on different paths, though we tread the same ground,
Each destiny has its own magic, its own constellation of falling stars,
Another's success is a chimera that disintegrates in my hands,
Like smoke rising towards...

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Made in Sheffield by Steven Cooke

Its Early Morning, a mist descends into the valley.
Not a Mist, from some love poem, but a fog forged in graft.
No sun shines here, for there is no welcome.
For here...

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In a city of shadows and glimmers, where glass towers rise like dreams
in a starless night, we search for the contours of our own destinies,
shrouded in the fine mist of mornings too hasty to greet...

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*WALK ME THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS VALLEY*

Hold my hand and walk me through
So that I will neither  fear nor fret
I am stranger on this lonely path
Lead me before the twin ancient temples
Let me worship before...

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Saloon
Squeezed between office buildings
On lower Broadway
Desolate and out of the way
Faint neon sign marks the place
For the downtown art scene.
Poetry readings on Sunday afternoons
Only the regulars show up 
Invited or not 
Some mount the stage...

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alone inside with me, less than inspirational

  so look out for the more interesting folk

  momentary excitement, the fiery motivational

  beyond the familiar, to stoke and provoke

  daydream departure from mundane...

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Scathing these miscoloured orbs of sight, with incised rocks carved beneath

Concretionaries jagged edges of contagiums....

Painted upon the predominating canvas of perceptions dank, pasteled times!

So what has changed, this mosaic of histories collective collage?

As one way...

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E Pluribus Unum ~  Out Of Many, One

[Author's note: E Pluribus Unum is a traditional motto of the United 
States, but the scope of this poem is intended to be of a more global...

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In the dark depths of ancient lands,
where shadows whisper secrets to the night,
lies a tale of a region forged by mystic hands,
a pure product marked by "justice and fraternity."
From the dawn of the shining royal...

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Love and death do not need to be sought, they seek you, two intertwined shadows
On the stage of your life, rays of gold and silver slipping through the windows of darkness,
Each heartbeat an echo of...

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When I can't sleep my creativity is at its highest peak... 
I write poems for friends who are alone and need solace,
all my senses are at work, sharper than the owls by of the creek;
my...

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Morning breaks in the city like a fountain running underground
And the Mayor is nowhere to be found; water is spilling in the air wetting the buildings far and near; the morning is fill with confusion...

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And suddenly, we were strangers again,
lost in the whispers of autumn leaves,
where laughter once danced like sunlight,
our shared stories, fragile as spun sugar,
swirling in the dim corners of memory,
each echo a soft ache against the...

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