Long Slug Poems

These are peace poems, prayer poems, hymns and lullabies I have written for family, friends and the world over the years ...

Peace Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

for Jim Dunlap

Be calm.
Be still.
Be silent, content.

Be one with the...

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Poems about Butterflies and Bees



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were,...

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Poems about Poems IV

The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak...

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This Permaculture Design Operetta
comes out from within you
with universally acclaimed Grand Patriarchal Earth Rights
to sing in reverse harmonic rhythms and blues
with Full-Octave Matriarchal Earther Feminists Wronged,
marginalized in pre-millennial peace-maker roles
postmillennially re-inheriting the Good Society's climate...

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I

These days I forgive myself everything. After all
I'm alone and unhappy so I give myself a little treat
whenever possible. On summer nights I remember
the good women who loved me but live with their husbands now.

This...

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Malnourishment is the song from the pans whose empty hold could offer no more products to be boiled and whirled. They were quite sad having been bought then hung. Hung. Sparkly signalling stale sales. Stale...

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An Echo Poem

Original: This Much I Know – Poem by Lora Colon of PoemHunter
Reprinted here with permission.

Soon the sun will set in this valley
Where I’ve roamed for many a year, 
So many questions left unanswered,...

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Here we are fans this fine summer day,
to watch Trash Can Cats, versus Downtown Stray.
The field is grand in this deep wooded glen,
pitchers are warming up in the bull pen.

Pitching for the Cats is Crazy...

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1	A plume of dirt and grime envelops sky;
		The hellish slug of gas does creep along.
		It casts an orb three hundred stories high
		Over the Sun and ends his morning song.
		The birds and trees now stand a...

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Spawned from the loins that 
Perpetuated the loyal serfs mongrel
Seed:-
These peoples of a conditioned and
"Resigned-To-it-all" breed.
Born into the enveloping tedium
Of interlocking days...Interwoven
With interlocking days -
Victims of stark circumstance
And vague promises unmade.
Gregariously living out their lives
When...

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Today August 29th, 2021 sluggishness dogs yours truly

Forecasting to thunderous applause
fast as greased lightning draws
upon futuristic atmospheric gewgaws
hot air emanates out these slackened jaws
spluttering courtesy indentured maws
armed with four footed tall paws
gesticulations resembling horizontal seesaws....

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It is a cold road to my mother’s house.
I have driven it hundreds of times and each time it seems to get colder.
I have cranked up the heat, yet the cold is like a knife...

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I used to never want children.
See,
I grew up in a home that housed tornadoes.
where yelling was the norm and the storms would cause chaos every single day.
My father,
Never stayed around.
My tears,
created oceans at my mother’s...

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Taming a tropical topical tree? Taking a trunk? Telling a tailor? Traversing a tale? Many ideas. Much like the ideological dramas of a beach front. Wavelength of winds. Movements if the tides. Coconuts can jump...

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You’re nothing, but scum
You’re nothing, but waste
You’re nothing, but trash
You’re nothing, but lies.

Loathing around the house
Ear stuck to the phone
Keeping dirty secrets 
Vanishing half the day.

A hollow shell of a man
A hollow shell of a...

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(Thinks) I Float like a Butterfly and sting like a tazer.
Mouth of the South, but my lips don't say (intelligent) 
words
Like Muhammad Alley Bin drive by shooting
Bin Laden with
delusions of g,
Being a lefty, I blame...

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Imagine it like a black slug, feeding on me, leeching off what is left of my happiness. Sitting deep in the pit of my stomach growing larger stronger with every day that goes by that...

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gardens are where we are:

  from "Eden" to "Gilgamesh", "Babylon" to "Gethsemane"
  from mountain to coast, town to country
  from wetlands to desert oasis, under the sea to the edge of ice
...

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Your nothing, but a piece of !
Your nothing, but a waste of space!
Your nothing, but a filthy liar!
Your nothing, but a sack of crap!

You got no heart
Just a hollow shell of a human
You’re a robot...

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"At a certain age not sure of,
...I was still young to discover the reality about that,
Heard of sex,and worked with curiosity to find its meaning as fact,
But,...'was it inspirational?',pinned the mind to that slug, 
Wanted...

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III.
There must be a hundred, silent and cruel,
a slow-moving wave as the night grew cool,
Rose had a shotgun, to blast out her hate,
yet Sol remained steady, motioned her to wait.

He didn’t shoot, he had planned...

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Smoke signals rise from Sitting Duck cavern
In town the Pitt gang are trashing the tavern
John Wayne strolled in and he ain’t here to dance
They say that he walked like he just sh*t his pants

Don’t be...

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Everyday I used to wake up and need weed, 
and I mean agonizingly ache tensing as I seek
consuming my mind, just one goal to achieve 
nothing but this everyday on repeat 

once I succeed I'd...

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Prospector Hank rode down the canyon cold
Ten years on the trail, out looking for gold,
Hank found a camp, not long abandoned then
In the dust lay tracks, of cows and of men.
Why cows would be here,...

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It is said that here in old Elmerton,
up in the mountains of fair Idaho,
terrible things regularly went down,
evil all of the townspeople would know.

A bandit known only as ‘Beast’ Horton
had killed the sheriff and taken...

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