Long Spills Poems

Flint 
Within its brilliance gleaming
Cool black in lacquered polished silver chrome
Cranked up pistons bleached in summer’s heat
Hot steam rising as gears thundering
Beyond the crystal liquid city lights
Highways built across the land
In hearts felt pride American...

Read More

"Open Oceans"



Kneeling on pearls
wisdom preys

praying
preying

hungry hearts
count the days 

wasting away
in all that preying 

for prayers 
to be answered

children become
strangers

reading 
strange words

finding 
themselves puzzled

genuflecting to a deity
they do not know, nor wish to

fumbling
mouths closed,

swallowed hole
in the...

Read More

Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds



Flying
by Michael R. Burch

I shall rise
and try the bloody wings of thought
ten thousand times
before I fly...

and then I'll sleep
and waste ten thousand nights
before I dream;

but when at last...
I soar the...

Read More

Dream-worker 
delves deeply into my dream;

vibrations fondle anticipation
foreplay wakes wide-eyed 
swells of liquid libido quake the rendezvous edge -
a primordial being in his prime
a masculine ego quest for affaire d’amour;
her night-loving body 
c h a...

Read More

THE INNER CHAMBER

Please.  Stop holding back on me.

Like a child standing at the neighborhood ice cream truck, arm outstretched, eyes huge, mouth watering.

I stand here longing to slip underneath your decades of cold-rolled steel...

Read More

The weight of the water is heavy in my chest, a force pressing against the ribs. It rises when I don’t expect it, like a flood breaking through cracked, neglected seams. The truck of my...

Read More

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...

Read More

Toddlers' Exploration: 

Cardboard drum and a thunderous beast
With playful roars in tiny fists and feasts.
Fleeting wings glide to dreams just out of reach
Soaring through tales of barnyard Waddles and Squeaks.
Moo! Quack! Giggles tumble and bump.
Flaps...

Read More

Starlight and Moonlight II

These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …




Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch 

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The night is dark and scary—
under...

Read More

Chinese Poets: English Translations

These are modern English translations of poems by some of the greatest Chinese poets of all time, including Du Fu, Huang O, Li Bai, Li Ching-jau, Li Qingzhao, Po Chu-I, Tzu Yeh,...

Read More

Break my neck; snap it in two, snap it in half
don't give me that incredulous, frightened look as I ask
don't hesitate in front of me, please just do me this favor
so I gain a halo,...

Read More

   


   Hypocrites sucking off the silicone tit 
of the antichrist spirit.
Man infestation from the pit of 
deliriot.
In hallowed halls of discord, whispers echo,
the chorus of the damned proletariat,
a venom, seeping...

Read More

Prelude to what…..

I see you,  /  you / yes, come into my…… 
laboratory of alchemist mystical languaging.
where arsenic spills into the whirlpool of thought 
and savage syntax shatter like glass on concrete.

Where Titans...

Read More

O’ my dearest love,  
I gather the world’s rarest petals for you—  
Ghost Orchid fragrance lingers  
in the marsh’s quiet air  

look, love, it fades  
then rises in  
the...

Read More

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...

Read More

I cannot stop laughing at the soldier acting
I cannot stop laughing at the soldier gasping
Every time I turned around he is looking on the ground
Hiding under the communist cap with the features of a pussycat
If...

Read More

I have a friend, old and retired, who keeps busy helping the poor. Let's call him Ted because he wants to remain anonymous. Some of his ideas, he says, wouldn’t make many of his neighbors...

Read More

I got friggin heebie jeebies

Cuz buzzards circle o'er me
eyeing these lovely bones prithee
id est Roy L. T. Canard, Si
hence impossible mission 
to be lovey dove vee.

Vague remembrances of dream  
which recurred with frequency
transfixed by...

Read More

A Place Not Meant To Be
           
PART: II            (699 of 1487 words)

#9: Days of...

Read More

In the raw expanse of land where rivers sigh,  
marked by the shadows of cats and dogs,  
with each puddle of yellow reminding us  
of lives once lived, hearts bound to the...

Read More

"Burnt Aqua"



I can taste the sun
on my tongue
it spills down 
my throat
like burnt aqua
healing the beating frisson

I am ebony inside
shading in my shadow world
some somnolent soul
waking from slumber’s dream dance 
a small death in life...

Read More

JACKS AND THE BOOM BOOM ROOM HISTORY AND SPOKEN WORD

Before the Boom Boom Room in San Francisco’s Fillmore District came to be, it was Jack’s.   A poppin’ groove organ funk soul jazz club...

Read More

“The Apocrypha of Familiars” 

Wings hover 
light luminescent
revelling sprites dark pearls
Corvidae shades
of a family 

highly functioning
dysfunctional plural
morphing unobserved
perceived non-unique 
spiralling into shape

more black and grey
than white spills 
from their eyes
light from their shining 
hidden away

intelligence...

Read More

~writer's notes~

i think out loud
from my fingers to a keyboard 
so forgive me if my speak
is somewhat long winded
if it has swirls and curls
this is me
hopefully you want to hear
my voice in its totality

~the prologue~

just...

Read More

A DARKEN TALE  
ONCE UPONE A TIME IN A LAND FAR BEYOND THE REACH OF GOD’S  
GOLDEN SKY 
THE DEMONS OF MY SOUL ARE CLUTTERING AROUND THIS  
COLD AND DARK ROOM PATIENTLY...

Read More