Long Shoes Poems

When I was a child
Everything was magical
Full of mystery and the unknown
I read hundreds of books
The library my haven
My home
Hours upon hours
Night and day
I read and got lost in text
They supplied me with adventures
Secret journeys
Fun...

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I smell like pencils in September.
After they’ve been brought to that…to the machine hanging on the closet wall where our coats, our boots, our bags, and nonsense lived.

You stared me in the eyes, since the...

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Agony be to society's demise
Labels are for fools, not for the wise
Play the familiar tune of in-unison serenity 
Fatality won't come any time soon, thankfully...

Homeless people were on the news not to long ago...I weep...

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WOMEN ...

Truly amaze me ... they possess the super-human
strength to birth a child - one of the most painful
and demanding physical and emotional feats of end-
urance known to our species - yet they have the
self-confidence...

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“SUMMER”



Where 
has Summer 
gone?

The world 
has lost 
Summer

Sweet 
little 
dream

missing 

all those other 
beautiful  
small dreams 

seen as toys
small and 
inconsequential 

casually tossed aside, 
disposable play,
things

pure shining lights
smiling eyes once so bright, 
switched off,

'neath...

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"Who Put Luebella down the Wych Elm?"

There are rumours
about me, some 
come seeking me
with their geiger counters
and ouji boards
with their heart 
shaped planchettes

unanswered questions
in the woods, crackling
within the sounds of leaves
invisible dead things speaking 
underfoot...

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With this needle and thread I stitch the wounds Avril left
but with this blade I angrily carve a new
rough, short, jagged adjacent from the bone in my wrist
for a reflection of our relationship
and an outlet...

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“Forever”



When The Terrors came,
The Uncontrollable Ones,
she closed her eyes
and listened for the notes
her mother had planted
amongst the deep blues,
beds of Forget-Me-Nots,
she followed the 
labyrinthine trail 
and through a gate unhinged,
it would seem destroyed, thrown aside,
she...

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Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (II)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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I used to dream of a dark hall. Dim. Empty with thick cheap navy curtains. 
The breeze. It felt hot and old. It shivered in the curtains that lined the walls on both sides.
The breeze....

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ALBERT EINSTEIN POEMS

These are "poems" I created from Albert Einstein quotes, changing a word here and there for the sake of meter and rhyme...



A question that sometimes drives me hazy: 
am I or are the...

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First they came for the Muslims

after Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - VI - Chaim Nachman Bialik, Erich Fried

After My Death
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
translation by Michael R. Burch

Say this when you eulogize me: 
Here was a man—now, poof, he's...

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The young lady's car slowed to a stop ...

As she pulled as far off the highway, (onto the shoulder), as she could
(Allowing for any snow plow that might come along).
She had chosen poorly this time
Believing...

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When oppositional cognitive dissonance 
deflects focus from compassion,
I've learned to go back to when I deflected focus from her.
She sends me passive-aggressive messages,
bread crumbs leading back in time 
to where she began to feel alone,
marginalized,
siloed,
anxious,
neglected.

If...

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I Have Labored Sore
anonymous medieval lyric (circa the fifteenth century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have labored sore / and suffered death, 
so now I rest / and catch my breath.
But I shall come /...

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Millie's Christmas Wish
Winter Vacation was coming
The kids were all set
They were thinking of Christmas
And the gifts they would get

But, Millie sat waiting
Thinking of nothing but snow
Watching the class clock
That was moving so slow


They did arts...

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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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THE INNER CHAMBER

Please.  Stop holding back on me.

Like a child standing at the neighborhood ice cream truck, arm outstretched, eyes huge, mouth watering.

I stand here longing to slip underneath your decades of cold-rolled steel...

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As to the this and the that and the how and the why,
    I pass no judgement on the tale at hand.
And leave it to scribes to much later decide
  ...

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It was 1968 we'd gathered again in the school auditorium my tiny hands sweating only five years old while my name was called in all of this cold  
civil rights riots plagued my little...

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My auntie came to visit when I was three, but nearly four.
    I proudly and lovingly wore her name gifted to me, a sweet legacy.
       I...

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