Long Shrivel Poems

“I am NOT like my father!!!
You say that again, I’m going to kill you!”

I shrivel up in shame
For, I am not to blame
For the shenanigans you put me through so many times
Sometimes, I wish I...

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I crept into the pit of hell all alone. Contingent upon my lifestyle I knew this could be my last day alive…

She haunted me in my dreams. She terrorized me in the sunlight but through...

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Dead Man Tales
shards of glass pearl the emperor's rise,
his arms embracing upon our sins and lies, 

do not deceive yourself , my friend.
in the twilight of our beings our corruption merges and blends.

there is no...

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Through Their Eyes

The Poetry Murders Part 3 in the series

Murder She Wrote

It was a dark night with a full moon
The alley narrow, my hopes high
My footsteps echoed in the ears of the invisible
I quicken my...

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Deep In Newly Disturbed Soil, Lies My True Love

(  “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them” – George Eliot.)

Deep in newly disturbed soil, lies my true love
'neath a canopy...

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If I could have chose to love another, 
And the heavens had fallen from the sky, 
And the fields which offer little or no hope,
Would I have chosen another love, or die?

If the ravages within...

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Once upon a time in a city called Paris in France, there was a young boy named Michel.
He had been called from the country to live with his grandmother in the city.


Since he was new...

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Starched tears stream, crust
over like a spoiled sweet on 
pink cheeks, flushed,
from suffocated time,
gasping for air,
I shatter at his words like brittle rust,
crushed to dust, 
mind meek.

Fifth time this week.
Shallow breaths to Karma Police,
struggle to...

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You said to me
"I want to be buried here
Under that little citrus tree..."
You smiled, decidedly
I looked at you perplexed
This was after your disdainful speech to me

I imagine queuing in the quiet, mournful strings
As a dim...

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‘so glad ya made it out alright,’ she says.
‘i’m feelin’ a whole lot better knowin’ that the crops’re bein’ taken care-uh.”
you nod, smile politely
and step out of your car straight into drying mud.
‘i just don’t...

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Here without you 
Paints me a realization that life isn't easy
It displaces the settling railroad
Taken away by the midnight train's calamity 

Waiting impatiently 
to face some inspiration given by God
Over the driver and I 

By the way you shrivel up...

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I will guard not against rules, but my conscience
And never shall exult in the esteem of men
For we all are brothers and sisters and friends,
Offspring of the muck whose bosom we embrace.
I live my life...

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re-write of American Pie:

A long, long time ago,
I can still remember when,
The presidency meant so much.

I was sure that when they got to vote,
They wouldn't choose that pompous goat,
And now I'm just astounded that they...

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I followed you down the rabbit hole,
   Believing in all the magic life could bring.
Thinking you would unlock the chains I wore,
   Setting my spirits free.
To teach me not to live...

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In the town of dust and fog, the bartenders are demigods.
    In the town of dust and fog, there is a drink they call the rising sun. Why they call
this drink the...

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sometime after the evident end
a relavent beginning can start
if we are not rigid, but able to bend
we can learn to open up our heart
many sorrows have receeded into memory
though our sadness still weighs so much
the...

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What should I write on Thanksgiving Day?
I don't think I will write about Thanksgiving
But I will write about a heart not be thankful
When you look around you 
And you don't see what you should be...

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In poetry, love and wisdom intertwine—a heartfelt love poem can carry profound wisdom, and wise reflections often touch upon matters of the heart. ????
Psalm 90:6
in the morning it springs up new, but by evening it...

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There she was sitting beneath a decaying     
Magnolia tree,   
Whistling the lamentations of the discontented,     
Absent mindedly flicking empty beer bottles into a arsenic pool,...

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Poppy
by Michael R. Burch

“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse, “The Second Coming”

It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn . . .
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.

The scarecrow flutters, listens,...

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It was a tiny thing
Just a little word
Made up of little letters
That you planted in my heart
You didn’t think much of it
You patted it down
And covered it with love

It wasn’t much
Just a little word
Little letters
Laced...

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I tilt my hat and look up to the clouds, The forecast said sun all day, 
The forecast was wrong, No change there.

I gaze up at the darkening clouds and smile, I love the rain,...

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OUT FROM THE HEAVENS 

Came this dazzling beautiful Gem, hurtling towards me
tail aglow, streaking across the darkened sky,
bearing an energy that lit up all I could ever want to see.
Her radiance so pure, this I...

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Clinging to the edge feverishly, knuckles whitening viciously, hanging on to you, hands gripping you tightly, letting you drag me along, this crumbling road, this winding path, made for two. Frozen, still as a rock,...

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The sidewalk crumbles beneath the weight of digging hands
Hands that are trying to find a meaning in something that has no such
And in the mist we can only see what we want to see because...

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