Long Steals Poems

"The Payload" 

The payload 
came crashing down
like rain expelled
from the fat belly 
of a ruinous pregnant cloud 
bilious with buxom promise

it came crashing down 
like school fish released 
from the tight confines
of a course rope...

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Impossible mission to captcha infinitesimal moment

alternately titled: tick tock runneth amuck
seconds elapse imperceptibly 
leaving me dumbstruck,
how quickly fleeting tempus fugit; 
ofttimes imagined as time thief.

Hence following vignette: quiet as a mouse lurks the time thief...

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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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Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

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What Good Are Our Tears?
by Michael R. Burch

What good are our tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence...

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There was a glimpse of time unknown to man
The things none may ever describe
All wrapped within this wall of thoughts
For if a moment of my thoughts are clear
They are not my thoughts at all
Never again...

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I shall resolve to leave this
Place now...
And steadfastly search out,
Nestling between ridge and bluff
Amidst the folds of a foreign 
Land,
Several acres of unkempt ground
Fallow and rough;
Upon which stands...
Crumbled stone walls
With an exposed slate roof in
Some...

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(Remembering Innocence)


Note to Readers of Previous Versions:
There are so many new vignettes scattered throughout the poem that I hope you will reread the whole thing! There are new tales, improvements to previous verses, and improved...

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Students conservative of body-health care
invest as necessary
in bowing and submitting subservience
to orthodox heterosexual vampirate mentors,
fundamentalist badnews evangelicals
sucking on pre-meditated rapture
of Heavenly bloodsucking EarthNatures.

To meet conservative RightWing
LeftBrain patriarchal 
student membership classroom requirements
of monoculturing monopolistic
indoor health-safety classrooms,
research...

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Selena...Sarah the Sorceress
Russell...the Ghost of Never-land
This year has not been mine
Death laughs at me as he steals my grandfather from me
while I plead emptily for him to take me instead
yet I fail to realize I'm...

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In the intimate interlace of free will and fate, in the ultimate interplay of time and place, and with the consummate checkmate of my human dignity, all that is.. is over in the stormy, swarming...

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Tell Them

To all who have never known, it's time that you've been told. 


Tell the population to change its ways before these lost lives and souls are all in vain. 

Tell the girls to think...

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As dawn unfolds today beyond my fractured windowpane,
a breeze beguiles the ashen drapes. Like snakes they slip aside,
revealing wanton worlds that race and run aground, insane,
immersed in scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and...

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This is my modern English translation of Paul Valéry's poem “Le cimetière marin” (“The graveyard by the sea”). Valéry was buried in the seaside cemetery evoked in his best-known poem. From the vantage of the...

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Waking up early steals your sleep, but sleeping too long steals your peace,
Like a morning thief leaving shadows in place of unfulfilled dreams,
Movement makes you feel pain in your muscles, but stillness weakens you,
Like a...

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Thump-thump of stiffening fish contorting
   In the bilge beneath the gunwale; 
 Lidless, bulging, reddened eyes, swivelling upwards, 
Protruding horribly from the straining sockets,
    Express stupefied amazement at inconceivable 
...

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My man’s veiled message unclear
I’ve dallied for four long years
Sis, have I ever been
Fooled!
Turns on the charm on a whim
Parades what you saw in him
Just a tad so you are
Fooled
There’s not a ring
not a vow
no...

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When breathless pain of sorrow 

                          Steals the joys of...

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A voice, a silky sweet voice i my ear
a whisper, a whispering question hanging in the air
but there's a conflict of interest
I'm no master nor hero
not even a zero, I'm just a boy
a boy craving...

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The Undertow


The two could feel the undertow
Pull at them both - then let them go
He wondered if she could know
Or sense it too and let it flow

The undertow in the fast-running tide
Ebbed and flowed at...

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Ego hears SuperEco's universal exhalation,
natural explication.
 
Id-entity actively self-purges with each inhalation,
even through dissonant death's hypothermic double-hinged boundary,
then emerges from inhaling information
to exhaling decomposition,
death and dissonance transcendent
polycultural Beloved Community Regenesis,
iconically liturgical within each human natured...

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More money makes themselvs better,
Such fancy cloths and shoes made with real leather,
They judge not knowing what happens behind the curtain,
They dont see the lost soul hidden,
Beneath the skin holds only darkness within,
Unless you have...

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I'm not a saint though I compel myself to be one
I'm not a sinner, no, yet I can't outrun the ideology
Ascending into descension or am I descending into ascension
Maybe I, maybe I am only stuck...

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In the shadows of a fading room,  
Lies a heart, a fragile thread in gloom.  
Time, the thief, steals moments away,  
Leaving whispers of love in decay.

Bridges once burned now smolder and...

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Candied dreams, burning away the twilight
Sandcastle memories, taken 
By the softest glow of a Southern moon,
Coloring the thoughts in reflections of sincerest
Beauty, rising like the breathless winds
Roaring through the pines, whispering sighs,
Risking moments bought by...

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