Long Starkly Poems

SELF REFLECTIONS

These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections, impressions and self-reflection. 

Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch 

for anyone struggling with self-image

She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she's grossly...

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In Colchester, CT,
and possibly in your town too,
we have a LongTerm ReCoVery Committee
looking at 20/20 prevision
for post-pandemic climate health revisions
for wealthy local and global EarthJustice.

So, what have I noticed
that might be economically
and ecologically win/win useful?

In...

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The tears flowed and I still smiled,
My body and spirit and mind,
Were still in that state of residual bliss,
Soaking in your sweet smile,
And savoring the moonlit skin before me,
But my soul was being torn asunder,
And...

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To receive care
that best meets your needs,
and also,
by the way,
everyone else's too,
we look first
to where and when we have given such care
since our original longest reborn journey
down Mom's birth canal,
prepared just in time for our...

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Stood I there, that last day,
On an iron bridge...
An aqueduct by design,
Where, looking dreamily out over
The Ernes Lower Lough,
My compressed shadow 
Momentarily paused -
To contently recline:
Amidst coy Junes radiant beams 
of sweet benign!
All was stilled,...

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Our humane-empowering species,
steeped in regenetic history
of human nature connecting
disconnecting
reconnecting
preconnecting,

Has an unfortunate tendency,
especially in Abrahamic historical traditions,
to imagine that our own religious tradition
is not only free of historical-cultural adaptation
but also the one supremely right-wing Way
orthodox Truth
healthy...

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Quotes:
1. "Doubt is not the absence of faith - certainty is!"  Karen Armstrong

therefore

2. "It is impossible to be a true Christian and not have doubts!"   Brian Johnston

3. “For by grace you have...

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I'm writing on the first page.
I love the concord and quiet at my age.
The morning came from a genius mage.
In my spirit, I am searching for the truth stage.
To understand things to resist this upsurge.
It...

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A whirl, a gust, and a thunderous boom commenced,
Heartened by the latter soreness of silent night,
Shackled through the chill blows above,
A tempest, a storm,
Threshing the world,
Shaking the Prison of Plot,

The waters of the Holy Spirit...

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he crafted word ...
all plucked delicately
like the petals pulled for a vinok
precious and pink and pulpy
wove them, giv'n a similar grace
not for vanity, mind you ... or even title
but to stir the cockles
a soul-or-two ......

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Courtesy severely receding hair line..., 
yours truly enveloped within morose mood

I (Samson incarnate) 
frankly experience zapped strength,
hence sulk and pine for salad days of youth
when abundant golden locks adorned me noggin.

Now in doddering dotage scant wisps...

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Organic
zero-waste stream 
permaculturally designed
and cooperatively owned
farms
are no more or less Democratic-Boutique ecopolitics

Than AgriBusiness
extractive anti-ecological 
rather than restorative-ecosystemic therapy,
competitively owned
and Business as Usual capitalist-colonizing designed
multinational conglomerates of anthro-hubris greed,
are no more or less Totalitarian Universal Supremacist...

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I'm musing with Jill Lepore,
historian (Harvard feminist, but definitely within brackets of general interest),
through eight hundred pages of These Truths
telling an other U.S. herstory.

She starkly says,
"Slavery is political"
while I had been thinking more of addictive...

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Thru a paroxysm of tears...

I inconsolably wept a river of sorrow
starkly aware alienated daughter(s)
implacable woe sundered fatherhood
yesterday, today and tomorrow.

A series of unfortunate events
(move over Lemony Snicket)
set in motion since my birth
unleashed impotent scrawny infant
registering...

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Antagonism's stand up protagonist,

Her dark comedy
impatient inside AuntAgony declares
left out right in face of
a bi-culturally sublime
ProWithiGistic voice within,
if S/He only vulnerably dared
to risk her starkly impatient tissue issues:

I did not choose
to lose
deep dark masculinity

To no...

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Please do not weep for me!

(alternately titled: dost newt expend
precious tears toward pitiful poet!)

Intense passion to read
doth foster divine enlightenment...

Also simultaneously, albeit instantaneously
triggering brutal mind-numbing self awareness
starkly underscoring how existence (mine)
devoid scant trace
positive life enhancing...

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Me, an aging baby boomer
long haired pencil necked geek
burning, depleting, using... fossil fuels,
thus a global nonrenewable resource(s)
repentant consumer
admitting heavily trod carbon footprint
additionally deeply enmired
within very late adolescence,

hence I shriek
with utter dismay
starkly aware personal hygiene
suffers direct...

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When Miss Lily Jane Bobbit arrived in that Alabama town,
jaws dropped; all eyes were riveted on her.
The ordinary street on which she lived would be no longer common,
for Lily Jane now graced it with her...

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Come see my world where the body is found
After the feast of worms is done; come see torn apart
The life and prospects skipping rope in children's heart
The dust drizzles atop the sutured sound
And eyes litany...

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Lovely enchantress of cyberspace

Betwixt and between us
lies an immense untraversable realm
of never knowable forbidding possibilities
quixotic, rhapsodic, sympathetic, telepathic...,
where tantalizing, scandalizing, and revolting, 
nevertheless promising fantasies beckons
buzzfeeding, crowdsourcing, dovetailing,
earthshaking, foo fighting, hashtagging,
jump/kick starting, twittering
uber whatsapp pining

toward...

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It seems that, more and more, I feel myself being drawn to face the dreaded realization that I am certifiably mentally ill, not just depressed, or anxious, or emotionally exhausted, but deluded, my sensibilities having...

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I cherish every precious lock of my hair as a keepsake

Twas partly on account
of yours truly being incarnation of Samson;
spouse and I wed
please fate, don't say alopecia didst tread;
though atheist to higher power
yours truly pled
heart...

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In the Winter of Night of Darkness -
                           ...

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In the heart of the night, with Chopin as the ally of silence,
Looking towards the sky, I wonder, who shall listen,
Knowing illusions fade, but you are eternity,
I'd summon you to me, through some conjuration, maybe.
I...

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Das Don doth debilitate democracy
driving a collateral wedge
deliberately dividing differences
collaborating, collapsing, and collaring
disparity amidst ever
increasing homogenization

extant within contiguous United States
across world wide web for that matter
attested by increased
spike among multiracial
amalgamated enclaves, individuals mixing,
where preponderance of...

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