Long Stages Poems

Rejection Slips 2

The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch
 
The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,
 
the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,

the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,
 
the face in the...

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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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Hi.
We don't have a lot of time,
or, well, I guess you do,
but I don't,
so let's plunge right into the first big question:
Which came first, form or function?

False dichotomy. No such thing as a totally dysfunctional...

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You've heard that self-unfulfilling prophecy?
"I love humanity--
it's just people I can't stand."

I love healthy humanity--
it's just uppity and/or snooty people I can't stand

I love cooperative humanity--
it's just overly-competitive individuals I can't stand.

Not so distant from,
I...

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Begins with Hyundai's my stalker fatal attraction 
rushing in front of our disabled vehicle then rams break 
hard causing us to panic my spouse and I both disabled 
this has cause severe discrimination and victimization...

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Villanelle: No man can on his own escape written fate

         For Thiru-Valluvar, the “nameless” author of 
the THIRUK-KURAL

Note: In my previous posts, especially on Canto 38, I...

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When my life has finally left me and my last breath has been shed
And the silver cord is broken and my bodies firmly dead
I shall hover near the body, download the scenes of this past...

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Dear Bishop Michael Cote, Doctor of Divinity
through pre-historic untold ages
through reborn renaissance stages
through industriously energetic praises
through enlightenment phases
through empowerment dysphasia

Some of us lesser health care practitioners,
good faith social workers,
teachers,
parents and grandparents,
uncles and aunts,
and ecofeminist inter-religious...

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Brian’s Poet of Note – ‘Herman Hesse’ Week 2

This week I thought I would discuss translating poetry from another language. I just finished retranslating from German this poem ‘Stufen’ from Hesse’s famous novel ‘The Glass...

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I wonder if everyone
has a most dreaded dreamed
nightmare worst way 
to conscientiously drop wrong dead.

Mine is claustrophobi-recallish buried
half alive at best is worse
in a wooden rough pine crate.

I'm feeling angry with those who raped,
then buried...

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Date:  August  2050
10:45 blissful Monday morning
Damian was in his DHRR office 
Peering through the panoramic 
Window. As he  met on Skype 
With investors and his brothers in
The office. The Hakim family was
Willing...

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I stumbled over Paul Tillich's translation
of the MessiahMentor's Other Great Commission.

The Great Commission we learned in Sunday School
was to go out and convert the barbarians
and savages to Christianity.

Yet this Other Great Commission feels like a...

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uncomfortableness, and hesitation arose that you might reassess a possibility for friendship or.... whatever with me.

A disappointment set in place in the event that based on some facet of my being (inexplicable flaws within this...

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As ev’ry flower wilts and ev’ry youngster				11
Must age, so manifests each stage of living,				11
All wisdom blossoms too and ev’ry virtue				11
Enjoys its time, and cannot last forever.				11
At ev’ry call of life, the heart of man should,				11
(Without...

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A notice appeared in the paper recently with the names and faces of eight men who have a combined wealth of $426 billion. According to Oxfam International, in 2015 this would have equaled the amount...

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It has been said
by Shakespearean wit
All the world's a stage.

And so it is, I actively and fluidly suppose,
One Great Transitioning Stage
of diverse seasons
and eons of becoming cooperatively larger
and, especially under climates of crisis,
competitively smaller, too...

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Hannah, could never remember a time when she wasn’t ill. The doctors had tried all sorts of stuff, and at times she had rallied. She was optimistic to begin with, but now she was just...

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Joyce Letitia Richmond-Solomon (A servant of God and a friend to man)

Every life has its seasons and God has created each individual for a purpose. Blessed and happy are those who discover their purpose and...

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We could speak together,
Decry rabid violence of chronically stressed kids
and young adults acting like kids,
apparently regardless of income or race;
perhaps not of enculturation.

Feeling claustrophobic,
anxious about an unpromising competitive future,
drowning in inch-deep and narrow boxed-in mentoring...

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“ We  are
                    What we eat“
         ...

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The weather was fine today so I decide to go outside and play
I didn't have a plan but I was consistent with the weather man
I stepped out of the house and walked down the empty...

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I hope it would not be a parody of Michael Morrell’s political scientific position
to suggest all relationships are political
and all political relationships fall somewhere on a spectrum
between perfect co-empathic trust,
nutritionally and regeneratively favored by creolizing...

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You know when you are growing up

The stages you go through

Make you the way you are

They help to make you...YOU

The people who you deal with

Whether family or your friends

Are very influential

And they're with you 'till...

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THIS THOUGHT THIS TIME
This is the time. To put forth in writing the words that plague my mind. An inevitable forthcoming of thoughts internally suppressed, I have thoughts that beg to be told from a...

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"Paper Tigers"



eyes mark slow time
spotting leopard rhyme
never changing its spots
black balled
white pops
the want-to-be bees
sting the dripping honey spot

slapping cards down
kitty pots are shuffled
bluffing intelligentsia
between the gaps
flatulent poets floss their teeth
waxing lyrical strings
tied to the weary...

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