Long Solitude Poems

Let me take a little sip
Of your blessed, breathtaking brilliance that will numb...
This pain I have in this heart of stone
The voices in my head won't leave me alone
I thought I was on my own,...

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How unparticular the day had particularly been,

On March the third of two-thousand and eighteen,

For the caretaker at an historic Adirondack Inn,

Had lacked company, and therefore, dopamine.

 

‘Twas Sunday when all the guests had fled,

From either...

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I heard you calling my name in an echoing whisper 
I saw a bird take wing in the whirling wind of disaster 
I put my weary head on your broad shoulders
The moment we touched, I...

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I.
He was patient very-very
with child's tenderness in eyes
yellow winged angel's unwary,
He was living quiet in skies.
Without disputes, without roughness, 
without want to weep and moan,
He was dreaming among heartless
building cloud castles alone.
He was waking up...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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The first soft snow: 
leaves of the awed jonquil 
bow low
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Come, investigate loneliness! 
a solitary leaf
clings to the Kiri tree
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The cheerful-chirping cricket
contends gray...

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Dusk-gliding swallow, 
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers! 
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A bee emerging
from deep within the peony's hairy recesses
flies off, sated
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

That dying cricket,...

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It’s heading for our planet at ten thousand miles an hour
To stop it all the experts say we haven’t got the power
All the nukes in all the world won’t constitute a plan
So someone said, ‘All...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems V

Poetry
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found you—shivering, bare.

They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both...

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Poems about the Coronavirus II


This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters...

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Lozenge
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 lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in...

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ALBERT EINSTEIN POEMS

These are "poems" I created from Albert Einstein quotes, changing a word here and there for the sake of meter and rhyme...



A question that sometimes drives me hazy: 
am I or are the...

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Poems about Poems III

Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil?
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but...

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"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

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*warning* disturbing lines have been detected - you have been warned, readers. Okay, enjoy this somewhat deep and astounding poem from me that took days to write...>:)

I bet you anything that I'm the laziest guy...

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Salve
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9-11

The world is unsalvageable ...
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as...

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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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 A French ‘Indianist’ Doctor: A Tribute to a Die-hard Humanist
                         ...

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I’m stronger than I realize,
I’m not alone
And I’m not a failure

I am focused on the prize -
God’s Kingdom today, though I’m on my own
Feeling like a Jailure

I was brave enough
Life can be quite rough
I was...

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I went again today ... to that place, the allurement overwhelming ... the one
we called "ours" so tritely, "mine" before you, "mine" again now, (tho' others
have doubtless staked claimed - ages before and since). I...

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Forever forgive me
For my one and only iniquity
Please forgive me
With forbearance eternally

Lots of anger and lust
Got a hold of me…
So, I must...oh, I must…
Set my soul free

Forever forgive me
Determine my footsteps to the light
Emotionally unhappy
Intervene...

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Is it just me or I'm starting to slow down along with the unwinding of time? 
Time is running out and oh how I feel sublime
I'm in need of understanding God's Word and Law 
I...

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Red light, the neon beer sign on the distant wall reflects off the long expanse of polished bar top, overpowering the quiet brown wood. It’s after lunch, only a few people in to stir the...

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I got up this morning in a good mood 
searching for solitude in the distant skies
And watching the clouds rolling by
I stopped and listened to the sounds around me
While contemplating my sacred destiny
Barking dogs and...

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(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")

Human hatchery

Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete...

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