Long Shells Poems

I’m in distress
I can’t express
How I feel deep down inside
This feeling is a terrible tide
How do I impress
Everyone here in excess?
I’m just here to simply abide
By God’s Law, I don’t subside

My tears are diamonds in...

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The emotional, mental and spiritual fallout courtesy Colt Gray

Apalachee High School,
located in Winder, Georgia
witnessed an active shooter,
whereby the alleged lone gunman
(actually just a teenager of fourteen years)
killed four people and injured nine more
the latter hospitalized with...

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Poems about Poems (II)

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss?
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds



Flying
by Michael R. Burch

I shall rise
and try the bloody wings of thought
ten thousand times
before I fly...

and then I'll sleep
and waste ten thousand nights
before I dream;

but when at last...
I soar the...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch

In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while...

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State of the Art (II)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer 
~~~~underwater~~~~
watching the shoreline...

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“Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and...

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Skin of Terror
- Daniel Henry Rodgers

(The stage lights come up slowly on Michael's face, which is crisscrossed with wrinkles from his fuming anxiety. He peers out into the gloominess at the wheel and tightly clutches...

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Start and end each day,
and life,
with a taoist egg.

I doubt my eggs are religious.

No, but they are natural,
organic incubators, 
co-arising nondual yolk form
with transparent regenerative function,
cosmological purpose, maybe,
if you're a chicken,
or a turkey, 
or a...

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My eyes stare straight,
fixated on something in the distance, 
humming a song that would send chills,
if you ever got the chance to listen.

A padded cell and a straitjacket,
the doctor giving one of his ‘visits,’
his moans...

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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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On this day 40 years ago in 1978 my mother, Jacqueline Anne Trestrail, left this world after a relatively short battle with cancer - she was 46. Jimmy Carter was President and Annie Hall won...

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CHALLENGE TITLE POETRY CONTEST FOR AUGUST ON POEMHUNTER.COM! 

'WHY DO TURTLES CROSS THE ROAD? '


OK FOLKS! Please choose your favorite poem from those entered here and remember too to give your reasons for your choice....

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VIII

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school and college student. 

Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that...

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Poems about Poets I


The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch

for Leslie Mellichamp

The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true ...

but...

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genius?
sometimes you are in its minimal spotted light...sometimes!
other times you just know you've been touched and you freeze,
moved but frozen...like a stranger it moves in, does its work and leaves.

...maybe it's been a while since...

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Ali's Song
by Michael R. Burch
for Muhammad Ali

They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river,...

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I wonder if everyone
has a most dreaded dreamed
nightmare worst way 
to conscientiously drop wrong dead.

Mine is claustrophobi-recallish buried
half alive at best is worse
in a wooden rough pine crate.

I'm feeling angry with those who raped,
then buried...

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My love was serpentine to the touch
I can't quite explain it...the love of mine
Had gone away from my sight and such
I can quiz my mind to say otherwise, my bittersweet sugar wine…

Why am I extremely...

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                             Brahman Nemesis

    ...

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Many of my favorite poems
How About This for Veterans Day

A monthly Monday morning military meeting
Would be great for them as way of greeting
Talking about things happening another day
Of past successes and prices they had to...

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Raid versus woe

Black flag(s) show up
on social media platforms
when potential homicidal maniac(s)
communicate(s) intent to strike
with ambush and ready
read - able, eager, and willing
to embark upon murderous rampage.

Prospective killer armed to the teeth
usually a young bucking...

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Beginnings – Endings

Out of the darkest reaches of time and space
came molten minerals, gasses, rocks, comets
– life traversing aeons, in suspended animation
across millions of light years, billions of desolate miles
creating unseen universe after universe,
creating unseen...

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How About This for Veterans Day

A monthly Monday morning military meeting
Would be great for them as way of greeting
Talking about things happening another day
Of past successes and prices they had to pay.

Enlisted Term of Service...

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Reducing sauces is a clever act that is not predetermined

Swimming in tepid waters often relieves tensions but a moose with a migraine prefers an ice cold bath. Bathing rituals signify statuses and this is referred...

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