Long Slatted Poems

The Moon as a Metaphor for Your Mouth
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a...

Read More

Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is...

Read More

Five miles of neatly spaced suckered palm planted 
Bustling promenade,
Not withstanding a provincial cafe-culture 
Of restaurants and exciting little bars,
Enhance upon regal elegance of the crammed hotels
Regency period style facades;
Their fashionable shadows slowly lifting and...

Read More

Dearest Lord Jesus, Lord in Your mercy hearken unto me, Thy good and Thy
faithful servant. "Rescue the perishing, pray for the dying, Jesus, (You) will 
rescue us (and also redeem us) Jesus will save. For...

Read More

**No matter what state that born again Christians establish after school
Bible study for elementary school students, the Satanists want to establish
after school groups worshiping Satan.  Even though they may or may not
personally worship him--they...

Read More

One of the four angelic messenger harbingers of doom, drew a large red line
from California, to Oregon and to Washington State. Clearly indicating the
exact boundaries where disaster was soon to strike!  This single large...

Read More

The beast is riding is the Ant-Christ and during the Battle of Armageddon, He will destroy the Harlot and kick her off of his back! But it is God who moves him to accomplish the...

Read More

On the anvil that’s the dorp
The noon-day sun beats down.
So between twelve and two
Life in the place is suspended.
Doors to the stores are ‘toe’
And in their dusty windows cheap 
Mannequins sleep with open eyes.

The air...

Read More

POEM
Title:  Broken

I was wrong,
So wrong that it hurts,
So wrong that it burns,
And the reason is difficult to discern,
We mathematically solved to get love in return
But lost is what we earned.

I'm Broken inside,
Is it something...

Read More

Ring damn it!!! 

-

Dust collects on the closed slatted blinds
as carpet stains scream each time I walk through
leaving trails of bread crumbs and ashes,
though without you I always find my way back
to those corners in...

Read More

I must sleep
I must sleep
I must sleep
Midnight comes and the night is still
Seconds tick by like water through a mill
I breathe in deeply and focus on the chasm
Wishing for slumber with increasing enthusiasm
Darkness close and...

Read More

Thank you

“And if the sun refused to shine”

Music finds my sleep and calls
from a bedside table,
slits of light through the slatted blinds
create mini horizons on the wall
Time has caught me once again
as Led Zeppelin reminds...

Read More

Esther Shugg

1833 – 1908

A woman’s heart forever resides
In the glowing hearth of her humble home.
Come Earth dwellers. Come Earth survivors.
I invite you to my warm and cozy house.
There, on the southwest corner
Of Mar Vista and...

Read More

If I search through old memories, shaking dust from visions long filed away, I can see scenes from my childhood. Whenever I am feeling old, I pull a few out, polish them up, and put...

Read More

The Dak Dak
The room is small
 With spaceships on the wall paper
A narrow brown wooden table sits quietly under the window.
Dark navy blue curtains fall
With cars and red, faded rockets
A small metal chair sits on...

Read More

The meeting point. Where candle smoke, mixed with incense, meanders through the air.  A latent image developing, like a polaroid of prayer, into microscopic particles of silver, weaving into an undulating bridge reaching to...

Read More

Buttocks push; breasts boast
through non-existent crowds.
A choreographed squall
above the whir and clunk
of loaded appliances.

Hispanic girls acting out
in a Laundromat.
Hips gesture, hands stab
and tussle with unwashed issues.

I’m distracted by the overheated hum,
can’t read the print
of my...

Read More

Fibreglass fibre optics frame fielding farmers. Fielding farmers are not playing rounders today. They are pushing little feet into wellington boots then chasing a lone sheep whilst riding on a two ton heifer who wears...

Read More

On the seventeenth floor
I spend too many days 
Staring into my hands as though
They might reveal something…

As though looking
Will cause all the things
That were once there 
To reveal themselves once more

My feet sketch the cracks...

Read More

Cattle to the slaughter, wood slatted carriage, 
Travelled reek of human waste, of fear, despair; 
Anguished weeps the daughter on parents fused in marriage, 
Crematoria arms embrace, emaciated, bare. 

Where grow the flowers now, fields...

Read More

Pale sleep awakens.
Another light scorns the earth 
as crooked fingers lash down,
their jagged streaks slashed by 
nagging pall puffs, shattered 
by lofty white swirls.

Breath drawn in- then out,
burying itself in rusted, fallowed 
dreams and nettled...

Read More

Buttocks push; breasts boast
through non-existent crowds.
A choreographed squall
above the whir and clunk
of loaded appliances.

Hispanic girls acting out
in a Laundromat.
Hips gesture, hands stab
and tussle with unwashed issues.
I’m distracted by the overheated hum,
can’t read the print
of my...

Read More

Buttocks push; breasts boast
through non-existent crowds.
A choreographed squall
above the whir and clunk
of loaded appliances.

Hispanic girls acting out
in a Laundromat.
Hips gesture, hands stab
and tussle with unwashed issues.
I’m distracted by the overheated hum,
can’t read the print
of my...

Read More

Homer Brunett
1879-1912

You didn’t think it would be easy? Did you? 
Life squirms incessantly, 
As with the molting snake,
Turning and squeezing into mortal convolutions, 
With myriad forgotten episodes
Of  human triumph and tragedy, 
Of endless drama...

Read More

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch 

How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no...

Read More