Long South Poems

I woke up in the middle of the night with tears running from my eyes. I woke up in the middle of the night because my spirit cries
It is not the tear that falls when...

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Humanity keeps looking forward, toward the coming of a birth,
and we’re all deemed as equals on our first day on this earth,
but as the years go quickly by our lives become our own;
we’re seen as...

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Unique: I need someone to hold me and tell
me it's alright.
I need someone to hold my hands and feel
my pain.
I need someone to kiss away my pain.
I need someone to look into my eyes and...

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“SUMMER”



Where 
has Summer 
gone?

The world 
has lost 
Summer

Sweet 
little 
dream

missing 

all those other 
beautiful  
small dreams 

seen as toys
small and 
inconsequential 

casually tossed aside, 
disposable play,
things

pure shining lights
smiling eyes once so bright, 
switched off,

'neath...

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Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common...

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Once,
or twice, 
maybe thrice,
surely not
not fractal

A clan of crazy ecofeminists
conspired within an 88 unit residential castle
in their historically converted 
sometimes hysterically clueless condo
colonial-red predative brick 
badly bald aging building

With a sometimes soggy south walled school,
but...

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See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

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Chinese Poets: English Translations II

These are modern English translations of poems by the Chinese poets Tzu Yeh, Lin Huiyin, Xu Zhimo and Huang E. These are poems about love, passion and beauty. 


Tzu Yeh (circa...

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- 2016 -

- JANUARY -

A freezing cold evening

Where the stars shining bright

With frost blade flanks

From mouth and nose steam

In the clear silence

White untrodden snows

Nature's frozen pulse

Sleep like a little baby

One gracious moon

After the night the...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems XI

Myth
by Michael R. Burch

after the sprung rhythm of Dylan Thomas

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and...

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Native American Translations

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own...

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Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch 

(dedicated to my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr.)

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long...

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Enheduanna is the first writer we know by name. She created the first poetry anthology and hymnal, circa 2250 BC, in ancient Sumer. She was the daughter of King Saragon the Great. 

Lament to the...

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Could you tell me, please,
how to become polypathically smarter,
economically deep learned and wisely adept 
co-arising ecologically systemic theories
to grow more co-empathic trust 
of and for cooperatively organizing positive 
nutritional slow-growth,
optimally sustainable Continuous Quality Health Improvement?

Try...

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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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Damian was on the tele-video 
conference with various Prestigious 
Proper people of distinction. The US
Vice president was on Skype along
With Secretary of State. He spoke 
With Russia's top diplomat, Valeiry
Sergei Shonikov, South African president 
Holu...

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I remember several prayers
to invoke God's blessings on America,
a reminder of traditional political 
mindfulness?
Fundamental lack of awareness 
of righteous economic investments
in win/win GoldenRule
positive social-psychological security.

No one "keeps"
or "makes"
this confederation of uniting states great,
unless we democratically...

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The soul of the earth is wrapped up inside
And the spirit of God is walking beside me
The universe rests upon my shoulder
And I can feel its power moving all over
embracing the soul of man
And causing...

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Sixty some odd years ago, when I was just a kid, our home was on the very edge of town.
The man that lived next door to us - a Mr. - O. M. Crabb -...

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A prayer for God to bless NativeAmericans
is also a reminder of traditional political mindfulness,
basic awareness of our economic investments in security.

No one "keeps" this confederation of uniting states
safe with alien immigrants
unless we invite them.

Second, prayers...

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"Dream 1: 4 Weeks in Positano"



Kisses long linger warm lips tasted intense
so sweet like cured Valencia Oranges
lips liquored triple sec not dry drunk on love
softly grazed, then held long

slow, deep, warm and wet

The story is...

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Goodness, I nearly lost my balance on the spiral seashells and broken sea stone chipping matrix.
My quaint obsession with marine life and that skyline paradox blossoming so tantalisingly,  might be a source of some...

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

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Merov’s Ghost (1) and Other Shots Across My Bow!

In mid-November of Fourteen, I published my first web verse here, (2)
the earliest spanned sixty years, composed for Senior English class
one night in Nineteen Sixty-One. Assigned just...

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Various Heresies 6

Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield...

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