Long Stiffened Poems

When you came to me...

Not that you wanted me.  Oh, no!  It was I who wanted you,
Your comfort... your caring... your
... compassion, your compassion...
Your body, beautiful and young, perhaps that as well at...

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How unparticular the day had particularly been,
On March the third of two-thousand and eighteen,
For the caretaker at an historic Adirondack Inn,
Had lacked company, and therefore, dopamine.

 ‘Twas Sunday when all the guests had fled,
From either...

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Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain...

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Here he stands, Edwardian vogue, sometimes with his spats, 
sometimes with his brogues below his dungarees. With rounded collar points and tie, and jacket donned below this flying suit, his waste is tied with simple...

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In glamor-light of sunset
a new crowd of cumulus clouds arrive
and revive a sepia sky-scene—
unworldly woolgatherers gather
spinning fantasy fluff into quixotic yarns
of debutantes dancing with honeymoon hunger;
their dewy eyes blurred by the sawdust of stardust

pseudo-princess-pleasure-seekers
—drama daring...

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The year has finally yawned and turned       
Upon a half-revealed shoulder.
A vibrancy, intrinsic to a reemerging 
Enforcement of the strengthening light, 
In its deliberate and unconcerned   ...

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Pied tidings of suburbian 
Magpies,
Squawking and squabbling,
Quarreling ferociously among 
Themselves - 
Rush to steal
From off the beleaguered bird 
tables,
To the annoyance of all concerned,
A much begrudged meal;
Before scurrying away into 
Unfrequented woodlands,
Marooned like islands in...

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So, sorry for you claiming this sad, sad world;
In your desperate means to cling to a disintegrating dream of mankind;
Your rose colored goggles fogging with deception and hate;
I apologize to every spirit and soul caught...

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I was asked to read some poetry down at an old folks home,
Where they'd lost need for toothbrushes, and naturally a comb,
That is the blokes of course, who are gummy, stooped and bald, 
And closing...

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1.


In the slow, dead hours that hang attendant
Upon the birth of the dawn,
When all things pure lie safe abed,
Nested in sleep's safe oblivion,
The rituals take place, unseen, unfelt
In woods or alleys
In the dry, dusty corners...

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Through storms, the sea of the bridge shivers,
Silken curves of titanium on pillars of ancient stone,
Dust gathers in my fists like onyx under veils of rusted gold,
And in the cosmic silence, my thoughts float like...

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Ogbuefi my great, great grandfather begat
Ifegwu, my great grand father and Pa Ifegwu
Begat Agwo, my grandfather whose sword slain many at the battle of the Mosanga.
And Agwo begat my father Ogbu- john
Who showed us common...

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In the heart of the night, next to the unmoved clock,
She lies, with the pillow—a saline lake of pagan scents,
Mourning something that was never spoken.
Prisoner in the castle of shadows, where darkness
Bearer of chaos, stretches...

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Past unconcerned hens that distractedly 
Scratch
Under frowning protestations from the
Sheltered Lee;
Into the cloaked shadows lain across the 
Cobbled courtyard,
Behind which squats the twisted form of
The old brooding, arthritic apple tree.
Past the neat little cow-byre 
Hosed...

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all the stuff going on that motel was heating up but the locksmith didn't speak
Irish too well & besides he got drunk & robbed the wrong merry-go-round anyway...
Sigh
Banal as it might seem, it's not how...

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On July 15, 2010, my wife, Teri, and I took our younger daughter, Isabel, to the doctor for a regular checkup. She was nine months old and appeared to be in perfect health. Her first...

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He paced the living room, furious with himself. What had he gotten himself into? Why had he agreed to Laila’s request to see her family? Here he was alone…all alone in the house with the...

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...He attitude was amusing to me
so I just laid back and watched he dress,
she seemed so damn angry with herself
over a night of athletic sex,
never have I seen a person so vexed.
She just stormed angrily...

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It's closing time, I'm sad to say.
The clock insists it's after five.
Now comes the hardest part of day,
The long, infernal homeward drive.

I leave my job and peace behind
And hit the highway as before,
To traffic tie-ups...

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although a group of people sustain their lives beautifying 
everything surrounding them 
insisting that everything is good 
because they are God’s creation

while another group of people  
though they also are humans  
swallow and...

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Gradually the crystalizing dawn -- more hardened  
    Than folded steel --- more sharper than 
  The blade that cuts! 
   Wisps of thin vapour, once loitering insidiously...

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Beneath the dome of an unforgiving sky, a spring with a leaden heart warms up,
Around it, whole worlds gather, with stiffened breaths and glassy stares,
Herds move, languidly inside a landscape torn from an apocalypse painting,
And...

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Although a withered tree possesses a charm of its own,
aside from elegance, what should this old man do,
because not even possess a taste of ordinary
but he is the man of base, the incarnation of disgust.

If...

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The Gift 
By – Roger White
      Each year, there is moment when I must sit alone in the dark dread of a cold winter night before I gather with family...

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She said, if I correctly recall,                  
That, for her, a sustaining love is an 
Absolute prerequisite for what...

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