Long Servile Poems

Poems about Dogs

This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my...

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Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp...

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"Azure Vistas"

Azure vistas presented themselves to me
rolling inwards the clouds like tumbleweeds
mercilessly bump fallen angels off the map
like torrents of rain falling petulantly on blunt contracts

I glimpsed the sweet refrain of a resurrection
swift upon a...

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"Backhand"



You have turned me
inside out, cut open
like a tennis ball
I used to beat backhand
along with the racket
hard against the garage wall

To make sense of it all
as a child, the grief stolen
all too swiftly and replaced...

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Nascent poetic tribute to black history month...
crafted before onset when people of color  
got acknowledged for twenty eight or nine days
depending if leap year occurred. 

Though I yam Caucasian,
rightful to honor most bitter
racist genocidal...

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“The Blue Nazarene” 

caeruleum caelum 
in nubibus
caeruleum

caeruleum caelum
in nubibus 
de hyacintho nazarene

testimonium:

white stallions, 

clouds commanding
Christus imperium
above all below 

all below 
now present to worship 
a secular ghost

stopped dead in their tracks
those ridiculous battalions
games of war...

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The Deception of Free Verse: Dreams I, Translation of Etiemble’s L’imposture du vers libre by T. Wignesan 

(From René Etiemble’s only poetry collection: le Coeur et la cendre: soixante ans de poésie (the heart and...

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"Who can bear to lose a tie
With a dog that is man’s best ally? .......by poet


"Here lies my dog, motionless in his kennel
unable to wag his tail as he always did.
yesterday when I saw him,...

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SELF PORTRAIT DEDICATED TO LEON TROTSKY (by Frida Kahlo)

                          ...

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I'm returning home
from a bag it yourself grocery,
and listening to an African-American novelist
respond to questions,
actual open-ended real NPR questions,
like old school inquisitive journalists once asked
before the polarizing days and nights
of fake right/wrong answer questions
and their...

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Worry knot chokes out the living daylights

I know from personal experience
the foolhardiness of
courting, flirting, honeymooning...
worse case scenario,
particularly when just a wee lad,
yours truly internalized
unfamiliar bodily aches and pains
as a death sentence,
slept with one eye opened
against...

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When that storm arrived,
the entire congregation 
in genuflection 
knelt before 
Her poetic prayers,
they saw themselves shining,
eventually, in Her reflection 

scandalously quiet 
like perculating thunder, 
their minds cracking open,
their whole chicken little sky 
falling closer ever...

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PETRARCH TRANSLATIONS

Sonnet XIV
by Petrarch
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lust, gluttony and idleness conspire
to banish every virtue from mankind, 
replaced by evil in his treacherous mind, 
thus robbing man of his Promethean fire, 
till his nature, overcome...

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There was a man who survived through 
everything against his will while he was alive.

One day this man’s ghost arose, walked out of his grave and followed his footmarks on a rugged trail, hard and...

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The mirtangist may never willingly hear
may not want to hear
the multaiyam announcing his cue
nor the melodist aware of the flautist's right
to the change in the raga
the plucking of the yal strings
to the goatskin drummed bleats
and...

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Such an interesting color, Rodger -
Green - like our mysterious calico eyes?
Yes?

You?
An idiot savant submits
into me - a blooming
garden of emerald delights? Like our
first encounter - regulated and raw (green).
Drawing our hunter-hued
curtains closed and tittering
in...

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Beneath the surface of the perceptive mortal senses
the mind nestles the buds of dreams it desires to see bloom.
Allured by avid aspirations into insipid ignorance,       
it suffers wandering in...

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In the absence of complication,
trials and tribulations become distant memories.
Above sapphire skies delight sanguine eyes -
inspiring forthcoming musings of the mind

Why, had the circumstances been not so 
You would have listened to my frail voice
As...

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Old servile sleep descends on heavy wings
From laden summits wrapped in icy clouds 
When, glassy-eyed, the owl cold midnight rings
And snowy mist the starry light enshrouds. 

Atop the ancient firs, the birds lie still
And cling...

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Platos dualism… 
                         Laertius' "magi”
The most noble say we are an...

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You look in your monochromatic mirror
and see a Lincoln Republican.

You read,
"You can fool some of the people some of the time,"
but not all the bicameral folks
all of their deep sacred ecology listening time.

But, you stopped...

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Better be a joker than a depressed man.
Better be kind and compassionate than an evil man.
Better be a good man than a bad man.

Better live in the now than live in the then.
Better be courageous...

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"The Pavane" 

Autumn leaves
whistle nonchalantly
along the left-behind

paths of serendipity
hesitantly touch fingers
lightly for a while, tipping

lost in the wastelands
winter beckons 
love unconditionally

magic listens
and arrives
in the laps go-lightly

of racing hares
tossed salad years
and marshmallow dreams

of servile tortoise
pleasantville sown...

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With me, during my high-school-days, studied a little boy, 
His father was a doctor. This filled him with immense joy;
At his constant demand, once to his dad's study I went,
Seeing the skeleton, to my feelings,...

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Shall we then accede 
to this awkward demise
is it our last sacred calling
while our eyes are fixed to the prize
to feel ourselves falling
while redemption stays just out of reach
all the beauty we are
passing just beyond...

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