Long Starched Poems

"Who Put Luebella down the Wych Elm?"

There are rumours
about me, some 
come seeking me
with their geiger counters
and ouji boards
with their heart 
shaped planchettes

unanswered questions
in the woods, crackling
within the sounds of leaves
invisible dead things speaking 
underfoot...

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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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Hold the phone, hold the freakin’ phone. Lisa’s got a boyfriend!
I’ve never seen Lisa with a boyfriend. Lisa draws men like fireworks on a dark night, but I’ve never seen her keep one. I mean,...

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Word Fantasy in F Sharp Minor  (3 Movements)

1

(Andante con moto)

Hey man. Take this.

I got it last night,
under a fractured street light,
with shattered pieces of clear glass, scattered
at the nexus of an obscure dark freeway...

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"Sliders"

500 clicks down, was code phrase for battle ships gone all depth charge. The deeper you go down that black-holed sink, the more you understand in your oxygen deprived brain, that there is a lesson...

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Starched tears stream, crust
over like a spoiled sweet on 
pink cheeks, flushed,
from suffocated time,
gasping for air,
I shatter at his words like brittle rust,
crushed to dust, 
mind meek.

Fifth time this week.
Shallow breaths to Karma Police,
struggle to...

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"At the Seat of the Catacombs of Amygdala"



 
"...the curse ruled from the underground down by the shore
And their hope grew with a hunger to live unlike before..." The Curse



Violet Black the night is...

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Maude’s Last Stand 

(Rage, Rage, Rage against the dying of the light - Dylan Thomas ) 

They put me on the second floor
Now uniforms pass by my door
Starched and stiff they bristle by
Sometimes I’ll catch...

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Invitations to the Gala
issued by a grave impala
were highly sought out missives 
by the bold and the submissive 
Those omitted uttered curses
shook angry fists or heavy purses
Had they but known that
the price of  admission
was...

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I stand inside a ballroom that stretches long before me,
it is a sitting room right now, formal chairs and setees,
tall windows stretch ceiling to floor, twice as tall as a man,
with velvet drapes sent from...

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In the small town that I grew up as a child, streets were neat and prim.
Trees lined up in rows of green statuesque figures. Children playing, riding bicycles, roller skating in the warm summer breeze....

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A hank of damp hair hangs limply on her forehead.  With the back of a work reddened hand she brushes it from her face.  From the galvanized tub before her, she withdraws a...

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Sauna Or Getting Cooked

Going viral, a video clip of a hairy burly Caucasian man in a white towel...
Approaches a steamed up glass door of a presumably hot sauna cubicle....
Opened the door, stepped in and flicked...

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A Chinese girl I took to a nunnery

			I

I led her
Her silent leg-irons cutting into my shins
That day when the air stood still
Dry as the day perhaps on the hill
					when he spoke standing still
Drier still my...

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So you think you know just how us cowboys should behave
But listening to your jawing, I hear Chisholm spinning in his grave
A Cowboy who don’t drink or cuss, I’ll tell you that’s not right
Ain’t you...

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In the back of my head, in the garden shed,
I see him as clearly as fresh white paint:
A little boy sat on the creosote floor, 
Dragged grazed knees hugged up to his chin, 
So familiar,...

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Ethel Hurst

1889 – 1918

I saw the town rise up
Like a single blade of grass after a spring rain.
I played a multitude of hop-scotch games
With my best friend Hannah on Penn Street.
And sipped a hundred ice...

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She measured only five foot tall,
With her stooped shoulders, even shorter.
Towered over by her strapping son,
My mother and each other daughter.
Grandma came from sturdy stock. 
On her own strength, she relied
To raise her five young...

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"The Epiphany Rose"

All well and good,
the story unfolds;
the isolating madness 
drew out the poets 
in all the shunned
playing up and out 
their origami
word games

something like 
an epiphany rose
in them, the mad,
recalcitrant ones,
like nuns leaving 
the...

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If I were to write a suicide note,
I would kiss every inch of the page, to drench it
With my last breathings of doomed love

If I were to write a suicide note,
I would spray each corner...

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Face fractured with fear 
As the Taxi drew near
The building was in the next street
" I'll drop you off here" 
Said Steve full of cheer
(Annoyingly rather upbeat.)

As you pushed on the door
It's sticky hinge ...

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Redemption 
She slowly uncoiled her gray streaked hair that fell to her waist. She removed her 
spectacles to see more clearly the windswept icy snow clinging to the branches. A 
pause, settling something deep within;...

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Am I hideous 


So many years have drained,
slowly taking what was once mine
scattering it over endless thoughts and memories
and I wonder why, where has it all gone?
Silver finds locks once dark,
muscles speak in much louder...

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Am I hideous 

So many years have drained,
slowly taking what was once mine
scattering it over endless thoughts and memories
And I wonder why, where has it all gone…
Silver finds locks once dark,
muscles speak in much louder...

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Love In The Library

     by Edmund Siejka

( East Of Seventh, poems by Edmund Siejka available on Amazon) 


He was a scrawny kid
In 1st grade his lunch money 
Often disappeared
By the 5th...

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