Long Shrouding Poems

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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Erin, for a girl who embodies Ireland
by Michael R. Burch

All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid...

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These are translations of some of the oldest Japanese waka, which evolved into tanka, renga and haiku. 

While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
—O no Yasumaro (circa 711), translation...

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Watching wan moonlight
illuminate tree limbs,
my heart also brims,
overflowing with autumn.
—Ono no Komachi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As I slept in isolation
my desired beloved appeared to me; 
therefore, dreams have become my reality
and consolation. 
—Ono...

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As I slept in isolation
my desired beloved appeared to me; 
therefore, dreams have become my reality
and consolation. 
—Ono no Komachi, translation by Michael R. Burch

Submit to you—is that what you advise? 
The way the ripples...

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Athenian Epitaphs

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls
in their...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VII

These are early poems I wrote as a boy and as a teenager.

The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men...

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I walk o u t...

I am lost in unapproachable light—a spectral broth
I am tasting the screaming silence—the archetypal observer
dissects my essence-fossil Passion
a seismic rupture between life/death/rebirth
gnaws at my marrow This dilemma-kudzu
coils tight, constricting tomorrow's breath

Death...

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Despite his impatience to show me his hell,
He waited for me in my rest, 
Lying upon the ground, I awoke in prayer,
Thanking God above and asking Him for guidance

“My heart is Yours, always,
From the moment...

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yet another iffy coronavirus haiku #1
by michael r. burch

plagued by the Plague
i plague the goldfish
with my verse



yet another iffy coronavirus haiku #2
by michael r. burch

sunflowers
hang their heads
embarrassed by their coronas

I wrote this poem after having...

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{"To the ones who want to love me first, I don’t deserve you, and you don’t deserve me. It is vivid, enduring to every human, alluring at any foul play you want to scream what...

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{Three o'clock on a December afternoon,
the sky is opaque as my nature has stood out, the rain drizzles down my windows and I am distinctly reminded how it once drizzled down my back; the lacquers...

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{"I wish somebody, some entity would’ve told me, even warned me with the intuitiveness that lies within the motherly instincts, the nature of humanity without malevolent reluctance. 
That lying in the darkness for whom which...

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{"Hadn’t you known, or care to acknowledge that I am wholly fond of my life as of right now? 
I’m in love with the lighting that shoots and grazes my neighbor's balcony as I sit...

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There stood a castle on the summit of a hill
Now fallen to decay, hidden among bushes wild
It perched like an eagle’s nest on the steep hill
It was owned by a Lord, gentle and mild

Blessed with...

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A boy and board in Brooklyn
bedeviled by the breath of baroque battles
bemused with a belligerent brain beauty
and befriended by battlefield bravado, 
the chessmen championed his ego
wickedly warring to a visionary's voodoo,
those soldiers of black and...

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"Cry for the soul that will not face the body" Dory Previn 

                      ...

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The Naked brazen placid blue
Meets its foe the dark forbidding nemeses
Who unleashes his growing anger and fury
Obliterating and defeating his enemy
Proclaims a victory and unrolls his miserable shroud
With utter contempt
And spews his venom
Impregnating his virgin...

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In a deep sleep, I fell upon the fields, tired, rejuvenated, and blessed
Wandering in many a dream

A warm sun creeping from the heavy cream clouds awoke me,
And I felt His presence once again
Sitting up, I...

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“In the cold embrace of death, we come to realize the fragility of human existence.” Unknown
**************************************************************

                   ...

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Your Rain was tears on my window pane -
the first poem of yours I had seen -
pain-drops spattered a snow-blank expanse,
grief-blue with regret and what should have been.
I thought mediocre. Bad omen for you.
You who...

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                                  ...

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These giant obtuse walls
these calculated architecture of impossible, impeccable accomplishment
How can I survive, they are bigger than me
shrouding me in a sense of what being Jack is
staring at a tall, magic beanstalk wanting to climb
wanting...

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“To Edward Young”
by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
translation by Michael R. Burch

Die, aged prophet: your crowning work your fulcrum;
now tears of joy
tremble on angel-lids
as heaven extends its welcome.

Why linger here? Have you not already built, great Mover,
a...

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Continued from The Eye of the Sea part 2


The heaving swell and the waves from hell
Soon swamped our valiant vessel,
With the holds in flood: tattered sails above,
We were in the direst of peril.

In a meet...

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