Long Spidery Poems

The Moon as a Metaphor for Your Mouth
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...

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Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is...

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1

Sunrise, late winter
skunk smell
turkey flock
playful otter, too.

The white heron
a great blue,
white phase,
in the abandoned beaver pond.

Purple clematis
its long-awned achenes
in globose heads
spidery, fiery, extravagant fruit!

To identify or classify
birds by
the complexity or beauty
of their songs.

And so
what is...

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I wanna trade in my stubby spindleshanks...,

(a poor excuse for legs),
and get me the latest
sophisticated prosthetics advancements,
whereat integration of cultured stem cells
into custom made appendages
allows, enables, and provides
unfortunate recipients of amputations
to experience sensations.

No more will...

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Elizabeth Ann "Liz" Sherman is a fictional character in the Hellboy Comic book
series. She is human.  Born in Kansas City, USA,  She was quite a normal child
until her pyrokinetic abilities manifested at about...

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Black market product truckload ... 
illegal cargo of tax-free merchandise,
and plenty boxed liquor of trouble
Leather clad tattooed dirty violet blonde
riding shotgun,
with a Rambo knife hugging her thigh
In the cab backseat
sit two mountain men beastie boys
strapped...

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The problem is her lips.
They don't form smiles any more than waves decide of their own accord 
to lift themselves up off of the ocean's surface.
And if lips are meant to be drowsy shutters
then hers...

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There are many pig-type stories,
Mostly told in piggy fables.
Most are cheerful little characters,
With "Happy Endings" in their labels.

Let's start with 'Porky Pig' cartoon,
S-s-s-stammering pig of Looney-Tune fame.
It's here I'll mention other pigs,
Because all pigs are...

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Upon Googling Petco
regarding purchasing gift card
for eldest daughter
(she tends two beautiful female felines)
Petsmart website appeared right and center
innocuously distracting purported intent.

The nearest latter named store
approximately a dozen plus miles away
whereas former specialty shop
in closer proximity...

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I can remember passing through
this town as a child,
stopping for a pie
on our way north.
Now it’s bypassed – barely more
than a clot lodged 
in the spidery veins of a map.
Most of the houses are empty,
the...

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It stood there
looking empty and old,
neglected and sad
with windows shuttered,
covered in shadow 
both day and night,
hovered over 
by trees whose branches
disguised the house
and made it seem 
a part of the 
overgrown landscape, 
completely surrounding it,
keeping...

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Orphaned Slab 
         by Odin Roark

They call me a foundation
once supporting siding and stone
wire
plumbing
shingles

Through the doors of my house
trailed family and friends
across kitchen floor
slanted slightly
letting Benny’s agate...

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Sassy sobriquets schooled sissy spindleshanks...
studious sexagenarian skinny scruffy scribe

My utmost humblest apology
for inducing the following
cerebral calisthenics upon your cranium,
but the cost of friendship
with yours truly 
(me – a foo fighting,
eagle eyed, beatle browed, beastie boy...

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Wood Carving


He sits there, not quite motionless, for
even the comfortable must alter their
perception occasionally, frozen stare
upon a craggy visage, tiny fox-like predator
eyes peering into your soul.  “What are his
origins?” ask the bespectacled intellectuals.
“Who is...

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Enervated and energized after cold shower
the perfect tonic to gin body though o'clock
wee hours August thirty one two thousand
nineteen - natural buzz to stave off relished
sleep, thus refueled with zest able to chop
chop thru printed...

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Thirty-one packs of chewing gum,
Clutter up my drawer,
And thirty-one times thereafter,
I forgot thirty-one times more,
And bought thirty-one times yet again
Seems somehow I found
Thirty-one more times,
I had thirty-one more such a yen... 

This went on for...

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A couple nights ago
(today being August 4th, 2021)
while walking around the parking lot after dark
over yonder shrieking catcall heard - hark
at first methought, a baby experienced distress,
I immediately scratched that notion
far fetched as sound out...

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For so long you’ve held the key, the scepter and the crown,
Harrowing the reality, the subconscious, the deep within.
Your voice was deep, poignant, forbidding. Clattering like,
The tumbling down of ancient and spidery bones, swishing
Like the...

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THE   DESTINY.


This is not a country for living souls
Recoiled the heart lives under the enshades
Of vampire ridden nature and all its pards
On beggarly sums amassed by the pauper
Of bleakness and cold hunger and...

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Sassy sobriquets schooled sissy spindleshanks...
studious skinny scruffy scribe

Scathing, scolding, screaming,
scorning, searing, sing,
sociopathic sarin soaked skewed
squirt, sputtering, squawking, sleepily
staggering, stabbing, swaggering
sweltering sadistic, sarcastic,

savage, systemically systematically
stigmatized, supersized saber sharp
schick shaving, shunned, sabotaged,
scarred, scorched, smote, sanguine,
stippled, speckled schizophrenic
sensibility,...

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This is not a country for living souls
Recoiled the heart lives under the enshades
Of vampire ridden nature and all its pards
On beggarly sums amassed by the pauper
Of bleakness and cold hunger and mort
Here existing we...

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This is not a country for living souls
Recoiled the heart lives under the enshades
Of vampire ridden nature and all its pards
On beggarly sums amassed by the pauper
Of bleakness and cold hunger and mort
Here existing we...

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Bubbling babbling burbling banter from the bar..

Sup hush….memory lane trip...Proustian rush..pleasingly tickled. 

Plushly ebbed…spidery beer swirls webbed…lace whirls..grace dimpled dappled jar..

Perch...parched pagans besmirch..sip...druid fluid drip..Iris’s secular church..

Venerate yesteryear dips…commemorate Faustian fillips....teasingly pickled..

Smug treacle toned thatch...

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Ameliorate the sensation sans being caught 
   between the devil and the dark blue sea,
This tethered to the oblate spheroid earthling 
   doth strive toward savoir-faire re:
As the fickle finger of...

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Mossy vines served as camouflage for a decaying headstone
This was the first time I’d laid eyes on your final resting place
In front of me stood a grey granite slab covered in emerald moss
Green ivy clung...

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