Long Stairways Poems

This is a very long poem and I will understand if you choose not to spend the time reading it. 
It is something I wrote a long time ago and I thought I’d just put...

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This is my translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's second elegy from his Duino Elegies, which he began composing at Duino Castle in 1912. 

Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Every angel...

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|SEVEN MINUTES UNTIL OUR DEMISE

{"Seven minutes left; the insistent buzz in my skull would never abrogate, it preserved on being continuously strenuous. 
My whacks on the veneer of the tiles went unheard of as my...

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A Friend in the Dark


A soft screeching sound over head brought me back
With Grey Bane in hand I swung quickly around
When I saw what it was I broke out in laughter
The little guy flew to...

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I
The beggar outside the supermarket
You swore was picked up later
In a flashy car
Sat there in the sun for 8 hours
While you pissed & moaned
All the way home
To your bookless
Mausoleum 
With a chlorinated pool
Where one day...

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Unquotable quotes: Gals, Dolls, Bitches and Broads – XXXVII

( No aspersions are being cast here, willingly or otherwise, on the fairer, stronger and infinitely more sagacious sex. Even if these over-used words are somewhat overloaded...

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My mind is like a haunted house,
and you are the restless spirit;
the poltergeist inside of it.
But in fact, it’s not really you:
it's just the remain of a once-called-precious vestige     
of my love for you.
 ...

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I feared that soon the snow would leave,
As I watched the melting wreaths give way,
To the hand of time, come now to press,
The passing of my holiday...

Where the ghosts of Christmas just now past,
Their laughter...

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I was a zealous, blue patrol officer, preserving the safer public environments,
As black, diamond nights come in sequence, with the glittery enlightenments.

I helped to direct ephemeral traffic, serving justice and enforcing eternal law,
Like moonlit streets...

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(On My Shock at the Sad News of Dr Fatemi’s Decease)

Dressed in mourning in a photo I came across at daybreak,
You broke the rueful, bitter news and struck me with shock and ache.
Would that I...

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In my imagination I have 16 nostrils,
As you can imagine that’s quite a buildup of green snot,
But it doesn’t matter because in my imagination,
I have 16 index figures, each one with a little mouth,
With razor...

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What is your temperature?
The doctor asked
During an ordinary visit.
I left the examining room
And walked through 
My palace
Skin and hair
Nails and tissue,
75 years of growth.
Ivy wild 
as a Venus flytrap
Snaring an insect.
Tendrils curl and cover
Cages of...

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Somewhere in the pretty petty imaginary illusion of delusion
There lies a truth an edifice of search between obtuse confusion

Windows like brick walls and concrete blocks birthing the light
Nails to be nailed screws to be screwed...

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The rails always hiss and scream 
a steel Woman pierces the ear
drum. We all shake, bobbing and 
dancing no skill required you
all do it equally as good 
Doors open and close. People 
enter and leave....

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RAVEN AND WREN

As the world wakes up
To the sun’s gentle rays of light
Frozen memories melt and flow 
Penetrate but do not satiate
Moments of insipid sight
A scenery of incessant delight
As the raven chases the wren
Back to...

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The truth of their own beholder. There is none in him in their golden deceit                    ...

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Stare-well.! gazing..As emotions and souls to your Majestic fields aspire..
Temporal surrounds me, ambiguous background; below crested fallow moons.."
Amplified." Intensity' as stellar images fall silently; while cresendos of beauty abound
Innumerable shifts of light and dark in...

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.

Looking on
this expanse that encircles me,
closing in during open hours,
unlocking doors I can’t seem to walk through
Stairways of rotted, termite eaten steps
each with my name painted on them,
creaking underfoot,
losing to the weight of
long lines at...

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Castles it always seems
Bring nightmares, instead of sweet dreams. 
So to turn that somehow around
Making it glass would be most profound.

Everything clear and bright as the sun
No tiny dark corners that will make me run.
Stairways...

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They were there all the time,
living life with the brightest smile...
giving us a reason to be alive,to be happy
without pretense,resentment or greed;
and we thought they would never leave
their families and friends in that horrible way!

Walk...

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When Yesterday's Ghost Rises From Its Grave,
4th poem, From my blog, A Quartet Of Poems

(4.)
 
When Yesterday's Ghost Rises From Its Grave,
(4th poem, From my blog, A Quartet Of Poems)

When yesterday's ghost rises from its...

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June the most beautiful month, delivered the most angelic Angels
                      ...

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What a good question,
How did I get here? You asked.  

At the beginning, a straight path,  
One second, one breath, at a time
in a haze, one step forward, at a time.
Sleep, eat, learn,...

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1st amendment atrocities
Secondary nature

Pound for pound
They scream above holy lungs
Of righteous contradictions

As humanity continues to dry-hump “social” media,
Their sedentary psychiatrist

Judgmental lip smacks
Chapped from the arrogant vowels
They spit
Another syllabic lyric
Within our home of the “free”

Our 50...

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Circumstance so familiar by memory painted sphere,
nuances of colorful thoughts looking through that window there.
The same song that gives this canvas its dimension,
doors to the threshold by mystic reason as ascension.
Generous nature in divine synchronicity...

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