Long Smoky Poems

Dear people, 
    (Am i?) Mad it’s a conformist state?
A status that perpetuates people to pair, to compare, to prepare, 
to perfect, before performance, …?
    -sure hard to try...

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LOVE POEMS III by Michael R. Burch

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch about passion, desire, lust, sex, dating, relationships, devotion and marriage. 


Violets
by Michael R. Burch

Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to...

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Alone I arrive, walking from Frederick
over the gaps, across gentle hills
out onto a knoll
overlooking this burnished landscape.
Before me I see countless writhing rows
of indiscernible shapes gathered
in terrible rituals mid fire and smoke
darkening the sun.
From distant...

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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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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch



Smoke
by Michael R. Burch

The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in)...

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Randomling 1:  Matthew Macfadyen

I believe I'm in love with Matthew Macfadyen
He inspires in me a terribly bad yen
But as poetry goes
His name 'spires woes
Cause nothing rhymes with "Macfadyen”.


Randomling 2: Birthday Wishes
  
For my birthday,...

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A nice couple. The Tale of Jean and William. Part 1

Jean Fallen was born in 1999 and had a lonely childhood. 
She grew up in Redfern but never went to school.
She lived with her mother...

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(A call for the lights to dim as a single spotlight illuminates the legend Judy Garland, who is center stage. She wears a faded housecoat as her beautiful, brandy brown eyes hold a lifetime of...

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Within the frame a sepia scene
a dusty porch   a rickety chair   
the fabric of your dusky face creased
with ceaseless sunbaked woes
your old pair of getaway feet gives 
a different walk of...

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Scent Of Paddy Flower

                               ...

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 enigmatically enlightened 
                   embodied essence of 
o__live imperceptible 
       ...

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“Barking Up the Wrong Tree” 

ghost gums
shed their bark 
the min-min 
makes good use of it
papyrus, soft enough to 
imprint and write
thoughts, like the 
ripening welts of 
green ants 
small bites sting
subcutaneous and 
meridional, 
terra...

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The sun, resplendent in its blazing might,
Burns fiercely o'er a barren, lifeless waste,
A desert dry and vast where earth is scorched
By searing radiation, deathly bright.
No sign of life but one lone phoenix flies,
Soaring precarious, close...

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BUSHFIRE
                                  ...

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Out in that sky, no one sleeps, not even the stars.

We are at the 24-hour late-nite diner

and they’re serving up fruit

from the plants growing out of the floor.

We watch bodies fall to the ground outside

like...

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“liaison dangereuse”



Tear a thin line 
along my skin
softly velvet
finger tips 
no nurses gloves

down my neck
along my throat
with something
sharp like words
on a tongue

like I’m
one of the 
gentility heard
soft as a block of butter
hard from the fridge
I'll...

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I never cared to do the dangerous things, and liked to play it safe,
But the strict bonds of ordinariness, can oftentimes start to chafe.

I always preferred to cover my bets, for I hated the idea...

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My roommates Leong, Sophie, (Charles) and I were coming from a Yale sporting event. The sky looked like a dirty Swiffer-mop and the wind seemed to be ignoring the posted 20mph speed limit. It was...

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Our UU ecofeminist minister
was verbally accosted one Sunday morning
after celebrating multicultural peace
and respect 
and integrity
sufficient to restore private ego- and public eco-justice.

This was far too much to take in,
to peacefully and holistically rake in,
for a...

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For years I was an aspiring singer, performing in trendy nightspots,
And I sang my heart out each evening, in all of the local hotspots.

Among the enthusiastic locals, at long last I'd made myself a name,
As...

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pitty-pit-pat, pitty-pit-pat ...

dark attic, echoing ... tenderly
rain on tin roof above,
her nana's voice, ages hence -
lives ago, really ... calling …

       "Little Tea Pot, Little Tea Pot -
 ...

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Smoke
by Michael R. Burch

The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in) my mind, and I can't say
if...

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Summer Haze
by Michael R. Burch

The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in) my mind, and I can't...

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Quy Nhon and The Tet Offensive
By Franklin Price
9/2/2018

Quy Nhon and the Tet offensive, more than fifty years ago
That Chinese New Year changed our world and most its ebb and flow
Until that day the boonies were...

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I held my arms, sleeping, around her breasts, bending, allowing myself to fall, the ghosting, dark wake, the fiery sands burned by a storm of thorn trees, burned by the march of sea and the...

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