Long Seminary Poems

I finally finished retiring four years ago,
a process that started in my mid-fifties
due to late adopting kids with special needs,
including needs for me to be home
to personally walk them on,
harness them in,
and wheel them back...

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	GREEN DAY – revisited
     Although the following poetic/prosaic material written January eighteenth two thousand and eighteen, I came across these encapsulated, enclosed, encoded, and encrusted with barnacle clad body electric of...

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While there is no story at all
unless it has at least two sides,
when it comes to ego's narrative lines
and epic paragraphs,
we have great difficulty in casting ourselves
as other than a one-sided protagonist story,
which others might...

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The revered Reverend Martin Luther King Junior

Born January fifteenth nineteen twenty nine
if still alive seven years shy 
attaining age of centenarian
father of civil rights movement,
the revered Martin Luther King Junior 
honored as benevolent demigod figure
to...

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Billie Joe Armstrong, 
   Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool
which trio known (the world wide web over) 
   as the band Green Day
   composed lyrics and melodies 
  ...

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O Jesus, Yeshua in Hebrew and Aramaic - as Mary called Thee
I tell my churches, my poets, family about YOU
They may suspect, "He lies, just a convert to Christianity,"
Dear Heart: Jesus is real, it took...

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Ninety-Three Daughters of Israel
a Holocaust poem by Chaya Feldman
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We washed our bodies
and cleansed ourselves;
we purified our souls
and became clean.

Death does not terrify us;
we are ready to confront him.

While alive we...

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whether you like it or not, your priest, your pastor, your minister,
your clergyman 
of whom you hold the utmost regard,
whose very advice
you secretly tell yourself has been inspired by
the lord your god &
maybe even “jesus”...

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Five score minus eight years ago
January eighteenth two thousand twenty one
father of civil rights movement
the revered Martin Luther King Junior honored
as benevolent demigod figure
to the oppressed African American population

without whose bold risks
and subsequent brutal assassination...

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I recall
from Catholic seminal
seminary daze,

Frocked monastic gaze
vowed nerve-systemic chastity,
self-sacrificing poverty,
political obedience
to a Great StraightMale Master
of God's paradise reclusive House
filled with sacred humane 
Men's Room Only vocations.

Yet I experienced these three
Green Commons commitments
in reverse Taoistic
NonZeroistic chronology
of...

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I studied liturgical theology in seminary.
Even so, I was struck by the simplicity
of Robin Wall Kimmerer's First Nation observation,
"Ceremony
is a vehicle
for belonging--
to a family,
to a people,
and to a land."

But,
what is necessary difference,
if any,
between ceremony and...

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My poem is patterned after John Crowe Ransom's "Blue Girls." I suppose you could call it a parody. His poem appears below mine.


Styling in your leggings, wildly designed,
Strutting to classes in your modern schools— 
While...

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Skipping thoughts across gelatin rings.
Into the reservoir of Lethologica
freezing-mirror- reflecting.
Nothings back to me.
What once was so lucid, liquid transfusive, a free flowing mainline of Offering, conducive to something.
A hopeful seminary seminar.
Priestly Dreams: Turned Cold:
WaxingColdOfPrisonOfShielding
Unseen:PulseStar Bard
Hands:Snatching...

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...The media was stunned by this action,
and even more so when he retired,
he said he could not hit a man again
after what he had just seen transpire,
that making money of televised strife
couldn’t justify the taking...

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I'm a 68 year aged
ecofeminist Taoist,
Yin Unitarian and Yang Universalist
in a bicameral
dipolar co-arising 
Left/Right-UnWinged EarthCentric kind of way

Where "permacultural"
presumes death
and resumes life,
both multiculturally held together
in win/win organically optimized resilience

Depolarizing,
restorative Green EarthJustice
and eco-resonant interfaith green peace
through...

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The answer used to come with great ease
My answer wasn’t an answer at all, but a complimentary question,
“What’s it like to not be a twin?”

I bypassed the story of the grape jelly on mom’s new...

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Immanuel Kant, changed the spelling of his name from Emmanuel to "Immanuel" to accord with its Hebrew meaning: "God is with us." So, this quintessential Enlightenment thinker  - and Thomas Jefferson a little after...

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When I was in an interfaith seminary
I noticed three models
for understanding a faith community's purpose
in a democratic and diverse society.

1. Conservation of SelfRighteous Anger

To compete with,
and thereby degenerate the powers of,
sin and evil and ignorance
in...

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In today’s highlight of moral issues:
leadership of clergy in the Catholic Church;
seen as a major backlog of urgent need
that came out as the topic of our guest speaker.

She’s Dr Monica Applewhite, Ph.D.
who presented ‘leadership’ in...

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The young and eager parson had completed his seminary education.
He girded his loins to battle sin and lead the wayward to salvation!
The pastoral selection committee after a long and deliberate search,
Invited him to pastor at...

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A time of revolution...
of a poet was at hand.
Of turbulence and triumph,
independent in a land.

On Golovinsky Prospect
to the main street of Tiflis.
Exploits of Djugashvili...
Tilipuchui Tavern was a fleese.

European fashions, Pushkin gardens,
grand hotels.
Often singing melodies, 
he...

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When I was in seminary
my spiritual director advised me to notice,
as had he,
that there are two kinds of:

Clergy

Those who understand their calling
as to coldly forgive
and heatedly challenge
all bedeviled sinners

And those who feel called to mentor
gods...

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Gramps had a Sunday rite,
It was quiet, perhaps trite. 
In his chalice a Bloody Mary,
As solemn as a seminary.

Took the goblet and a crank,
To his great Big Ben clock.
Slowly wound as he drank,
When done, he’d...

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I have stood upon, The hallowed ground
Where so many souls had perished,
That ugly war between the states
Their memories, I will cherish,

I have seen the cannons, on the hill
Of Seminary Ridge,
Those balls of fire, that rained...

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“Give me 100 preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God; such alone will shake the gates of hell.”
- John Wesley

While he was at a tent revival with a friend,
He gave his...

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