Long Snaps Poems

Epigrams by Michael R. Burch



Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch
 
Show me your most intimate items of apparel:
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip ...



Negotiables
by Michael R. Burch

Love should be more than the sum of its...

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Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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Salvation of a Formalist, an Ode to Entropy
by Michael R. Burch

Entropy?
God's universal decree
That I get to be
Disorderly?
Suddenly
My erstwhile boxed-in verse is free?
Wheeeeee!



Eternal Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm...

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Poems about Things that Break I
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

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Rejection Slips

With over 5,700 publications if I count poems that have gone viral, I suppose I shouldn’t complain … but I do have some poems that have never been accepted for publication. Here are a...

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Poems about Things that Break III
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

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Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

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



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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Do you know what it feels like when your dad leaves to go get the milk and comes back with a gun and some vengeance?
No? Well me neither.
See look, being funny is hard.
Some people don’t...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (III)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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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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When Grandma died, I found some things

                         Gifts midst tears that...

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One bright night
In the Twilight of day
I awoken to a dream
With in a world of worlds 
Not my self, but still the same
What was it? Never more
What year was it? Forgotten 
One must be careful...

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I’m so siced about the Barbie movie. I just watched the latest trailer. I felt a fluttering in the stummy.

Peter’s birthday was May 1st. “What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“A flash for...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - III - Miklos Radnoti

Miklos Radnoti was one of the greatest of the Jewish Holocaust poets. He died on a Nazi death march, shot to death in cold...

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Submitted to the "Gone Fishin" contest
------------------------------------------------
Trollin’ the islands at Texoma,
It was April, 1964.
New rod and reel in hand,
I’d NEVER been fishing before.

A Garcia 2510T casting rod.
The reel, a Mitchell 301,
Plus hand-selected worms and lures…
I was...

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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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Lisa and I went to a reception, yesterday evening, for students who’d landed summer fellowships at a particular hospital in Boston. (Yeah us!) It wasn’t formal, so I wore a crimson cropped sweater, a beige...

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                              U
    ...

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“The point man blues” begins . . .

He slogs along all day in the oppressive heat; Constantly fighting the jungle that reaches out around him, always, it seems, trying to take him down. His eyes,...

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Inspection took place February 17th, 2023...

At 1330 hours (indicated
courtesy notification slipped under door
less than twenty four hours)
hence foretold ill fate
by property (crooks and quade) management
the head honcho zaftig, wanker,
(who replaced the warden)

and Rich (BOLD FACE...

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POTD 7th Mar 2018

I trust you like the music video clip which enhances the poem

Like dark molten honey caressing her tongue
and soul food for taste buds addicted to caffeine
Coffee has its own excitation
The book has...

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Acute advice for those* who would be King from the THIRUK-KURAL: Valiarithal - K475
[*like presidents, prime and chief ministers, dictators or even modern-day "emperors" under the guise of revolutionary leaders of oppressed peoples]

Note: In this...

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“Her Ever Changing Moods, the Rapture Reprising”

Lavender seduces symmetry  
in her ever changing moods
slips into something more comfortable

a swollen tangerine sky 
moves its tongue over 
the blues of her violet harbour 

calling the siren...

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When I was just a teenage lad, and growing up out west
I never wore a cowboy hat or fancy leather vests,
never put on cowboy boots or western shirts with snaps,
never wore tooled leather belts, much...

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