Long Scuttled Poems

Impossible mission to captcha infinitesimal moment

alternately titled: tick tock runneth amuck
seconds elapse imperceptibly 
leaving me dumbstruck,
how quickly fleeting tempus fugit; 
ofttimes imagined as time thief.

Hence following vignette: quiet as a mouse lurks the time thief...

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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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Juvenilia: Early Poems IV
I wrote this around age 17.



Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.

I read the Bible from cover to cover at age eleven, ten chapters per day, at the suggestion...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch



Smoke
by Michael R. Burch

The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in)...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems XII

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly,...

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I was never quite a candy kid
But I jumped right into the soup
I had a list of my favorite chemicals on the wall in college, a tribute, an ode
My first cigarette owned me, called on...

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A Harlem hoodlum, (albeit respectable)...

ready for night time in bedlam
after swallowing me favorite dram,
cuz reasonable rhyme resembles flimflam.

Whiling away his time playing solitaire...
initially prepped, honed, and crafted
November second two thousand and twenty
slightly tweaked February nineteenth
two...

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After the Vietnams and the Me Leis
Steel skull
Stone eye
Blooming jungle rot
Itching on the crotch
Jack scratches the trigger of his M14
Kisses the golden egg
And throws like the Babe.
Jack is now back from hell and trying to...

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A hoodlum, (albeit respectable) in bedlam

whiling away his time playing solitaire...
November second two thousand and twenty
fast approaching the final countdown

With less than twenty four, twenty three, 
twenty two...  hours
harkening, heralding or (worse case scenario)
hindering...

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THE STARGAZER'S RIDE
                                ...

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I
There are two ways of being in this world,
the eagle and the serpent, sometimes called:
while one seeks boundless heaven, wings unfurled,
the other through low dirt has always crawled,
and seeks to crush or poison.  Naked,...

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I got your back
Numb is my heart
Night tearing me apart
Unfeeling you came to be
Numb is my heart
Night tearing me apart
Unfeeling you came to be
Numb is my heart
Night tearing me apart
Unfeeling you came to be
Unfeeling you...

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Herons fragment the mist,
appear and disappear while remaining motionless.
The skiff rocks as a coal barge trundles past.
A dewy sky shivers.

Nowadays he just sits in a boat looking at Ohio.
This morning the sun reached the top...

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There was a bongoman, and he dreaming
Where the rock hovered above the blue sea
Looked through the white mist of a dew drenched morning
And clenched tight his memory of history
Black as midnight: showed me shining like...

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Urges ushered Est’bel out of her abode –
a cottage cobbled together from cobwebs and clapboard – 
and she scuttled forth,
her nesty hair tousled
by a leaf-laced breeze

In her bony hands she clutched
dregs of a nightmeg broth
in...

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Have you ever seen a catterfairy?
Many found her to be quite scary,

She came out of her cocoon others said to soon
And only part of her had seemed to bloom.

Her green body dragged on the cold...

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I wandered down the forest way
out into clearing bright
flowers wild in breezes sway
burnished in the noon day light

drowsy from the heat I stray
beneath a drooping limb
above I hear a scolding jay
as weary eyes go dim

I...

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Courtesy the mighty Amazon successful deliverance reported...

Regarding unexpected Gadshill gift
(as if delivered from Magi)
tamper proof wrapped,
thus an obligation goads me
to communicate following
trademarked™ poetically apt
reasonable rhyme capped
with feeble airborne attempt,

no matter arms waved futilely,
madly, and ridiculously...

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IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY : LXXIV

IF ever I had a country proud of its sacred Soul Patrie
And if ever by a long shot I was nominated - not spuriously elected - Chef Ministre...

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fittingly dubbed “The Pearl of the Orient Seas”
an archipelago of 7,641 islands, the Philippines
majestically sits in vast waters between
Pacific Ocean and South China Sea.

Named after King Phillip II of Spain,
Philippines was its given name
Raw and...

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They surrounded him with ruthless intentions,
Until he quickly decided to mention,
“I am more like you wolves than you think”
“I am your human, missing link”
“Let me prove to all of you”
“That I am capable of being...

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Gunfight in old Abilene

With his hat drawn way down, reins loose in his hands
His horse sweating pints, the sun burning down
The dust from the trail was choking his throat
The Abilene sign, said, two miles to...

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she ...

gently shivered ...
venetian-sieved ribbons of moonlight
wanly striping her face ... 
the words struggled on her lips
then ever-so-softly, dripped like maple syrup
and found purchase in my mind
plopping sticky and plump with feigned
self-importance ...
"Don't you love...

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Banyoles

With borrowed funds 
And broken hearts
We hitched a ride with the country’s realm,
Running, stupefied with pungent balm.
Through London swarms and Navy shops
We lavished on ponchos 
And swagger.
We met an astronaut that day,
On a bus to...

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No flower
Nor wreath 
Shall those deceased 
Call to arms 

On unknown gravus
That cross the bows of scuttled ships
That sank before the powder mist

Kisses follies chance encountered 
Praying for an end to war
Could not save
Nor pebbles...

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