Long Soiled Poems

Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve...

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“ANTE BELLUM”


BEIGEBest served where it can’t be seen
On Stirling Silver platters
With redruM narcotics
Delivered by sharp Blood-Red
Well-mannered talons
Strutting in sleek wet rolling tight-skirted
Long French Silk Stockinged legs all the way down to 
Lethal Six Inch stilettos...

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I'm not much of a writer,
more of an activist,
a doer,
timeless doing.

Anyway, my Yang side,
which you AnthroTribes might re-cognize as EcoJustice,
emerges from my PositiveYang/NotNegativeYin 
Win/Win Balancing 
compassionate/pleasant 
dialectically dipolar
co-binary appositional
positive/negative co-relational,
co-arising leftmind/rightbody hemispheres
of enbrightening light
and empowering...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - IV - Primo Levi

Shema
by Primo Levi
translation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable houses, 
who return each evening to find
warm food, 
welcoming faces...

consider whether this...

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Paradise
like Rome
is not built
and not rebuilt
and rebuilt
and redeveloped
and healed
and redeemed
in one 24-hour
cycle
and recycle
and revolving
round day v night,

And/or 
appreciatively regarding both day
and dualdark
rich and fertile 
souled and soiled
recycling night.

So too
my personal
and political
and economic
and ecological
and theologically reformed...

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So bridge to bridge, of other things speaking
Of which my comedy does not take care,
We walked; and reached the top, when seeking
For watching the next slit, then we stopped there
Malebolge to see and crying vain;
And...

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I heard two distinct voices in the night,
Conversing amongst themselves most eagerly
They whispered like children in excitement
Their sardonic mouths sung many savvy tunes
It was Death I could perceive, defending me,
And he, a strange, distant friend
Seemed...

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as the PROPHETS of profits, WE lead and WE’re fair
while WE’re living the life of the poor BILLIONAIRE
– silver yachts, pearly castles, cash (plenty to spare) –
with the world on OUR backs... ah! the burdens...

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“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
–“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” by W.B. Yeats 

“I love you...

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Exhausted, yet I can't sleep
So glad that I don't want to weep
You're living your epic life 
While mine cuts like a knife 

Under the horizon,
I see the reflection of the sun
Over the rainbow,
I see a...

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"The Crow Bar"

she said,
here I bury my dead,
you can hear them sleeping
somnulent forget-me-nots,
snoring blithely unaware,
in neat rows between 
the thick,
ink injected lines,
their soiled lives
ploughed and 
turned over 
replanted
sunnyside down
expunged and 
wrung out

eventually,
not totally oblivious, 
they...

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A Commentary on

"A Note on the [Patriarchal-Colonizing] Treatment
of Plant Names"
by Robin Wall Kimmerer, p. 385
BRAIDING SWEETGRASS:
INDIGENOUS WISDOM,
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE,
AND THE [SACRED] TEACHINGS
OF PLANTS

I too often accept
with nary a LeftBrain dominant thought
that our verbalized labels
for individual EgoPersons
are...

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Now we along one of hard rims are brought;
And a thin spray on the  brook is fixed, 
So shield to rims and water is begot.

As Flemings, Cadsand and Bruges bewixt,
Fearing the high waves pouncing...

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His words stung me, as the cries from the maelstrom seem to retort
Their scattered, foreign words and wails retching their say
I listened, almost mesmerized,
Pulverized

“Come,” Said he,
With threatening authority

Upwards, higher than the balcony from which we...

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Unquotable quotes: Paris, the last week of the August reprieve – XXXV Part Two
                 II

The first signs reek tell-tale
Buffer-to-buffer...

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Part of my soul severed by their ruthless oppression, demoralization and exploitation of a frightened and abandoned child.

Part of me drowning in detrimental sorrow as a 10 yr. old coerced by the evilness on the...

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Nightmare 8. To Lose the Gift of Feeling Heard

Is each person not poet when he spills his heart?
Has your verse lost its edge if it’s true no one listens,
Or does God mean that no one...

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Thank God, for people of order 
That disciplined, hold in people like myself.

We men, who enjoy strange living so…

In such outrageous outposts
Tempting a varied life… 

As well as early imprintings so…
Weren’t we told to be...

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Chief garbage taster as fifth grade Halloween gag
at Henry Kline Boyer Elementary School
interestingly enough landed me a grubhub grab bag.

I rooted thru poetry anthology of mine,
and came across an unpublished poem
by one obscure poet (me),...

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That soft-spoken Sovereign commands a big stick, 
runs the world into ruins, once our bailiwick.
If asked why, He grins grimly, pale lips slightly pursed:
"Vindication? Straightforward: It's Me and Me First" 

(To mesmerise people He needed...

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It was a bitter morning, the ground hotter upon my flesh
I kneeled at the center of the pit on the twentieth day,
Remembering a tune sung so long ago,
A great song grieving for the incessant wars...

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(Door bell rings)

 — The damn dog barks and a voice is heard. Arms stretch, forming a letter Y. A head shakes. Dimples become this smooth cheek; lips form a letter O... Exhaled respiration sighs; the break of...

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A whirl, a gust, and a thunderous boom commenced,
Heartened by the latter soreness of silent night,
Shackled through the chill blows above,
A tempest, a storm,
Threshing the world,
Shaking the Prison of Plot,

The waters of the Holy Spirit...

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Bolsonaro was president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023.
Former army officer and right-wing nationalist who revered Brazil's 1964–1985 military rule.
Jair Bolsonaro sought to arm a disarmed nation.
To a place where gun ownership meant freedom.
Anti-establishment populism...

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I feel like hurting myself, I’m sorry, Lord
Don’t know why I feel the urge crawl into me
With crooked, malicious, wicked discord
I need scars of soaring, eager sympathy 
To be my shadow beneath me
I love the...

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