Long Stoned Poems

I’m in distress
I can’t express
How I feel deep down inside
This feeling is a terrible tide
How do I impress
Everyone here in excess?
I’m just here to simply abide
By God’s Law, I don’t subside

My tears are diamonds in...

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“I am NOT like my father!!!
You say that again, I’m going to kill you!”

I shrivel up in shame
For, I am not to blame
For the shenanigans you put me through so many times
Sometimes, I wish I...

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Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Rejection Slips 3

Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

Whenever my writing gets rejected,
I always wonder how the rejecter got elected.
Are we exchanging at the same Bourse?
(Excepting present company, of course!)

When editors reject my poems, did I slip...

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Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

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Like Hannibal we crossed the pass and crossed 
   the Alps (okay, the Brynderwyn Hills) 
and a bridge too far on north-west passage.
   From out of the Valley of Mizpah 
to...

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I wrote a sad but true urban legend called “Dillen and the DMV” last week.
Here follows an update.

Background Review:

One of my health care employees, Dillen, has wicked ADD, borderline intelligence, not qualifying for disability supports,...

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Sonnets XC-XCVII

Artificial Smile
by Michael R. Burch

I’m waiting for my artificial teeth
to stretch belief, to hollow out the cob
of zealous righteousness, to grasp life’s stub
between clenched molars, and yank out the grief.

Mine must be art-official?zenlike Art?
a...

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Verse 1: I'm loving every second of our time together
I'm liking the fact that you aren't a memory, all ablur
I adore you and everything about you
We were meant to be...you came to me out of...

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_ a symphonic, folk rock, blues song
1.
I'm an old man looking
For the lost, best parts of me.
I'm an old man looking
For the lost, best parts of me.
I'm looking in the places
Where the people say love...

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Instant individual redemption
from predative enculturation
is overly spiritualized,
under naturalized,
rightwing evangelical dogma
more likely found in empire-building
strong business-loyalty development texts
than multi-enculturing
re-connecting
re-ligioning nature/spirit scriptures.

If spiritual 
and capital redemption from baseline natural evils
is good news for individuals,
yet inapplicable to global...

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Stones do not speak the language of men or of angels.                        ...

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FATTI GLI AFFRI TUOI THE SIMPLE PLEASURE OF LIFE IS ALL WE REALLY OWN IN THIS LIFE I TRIED TO TELL YOU BUT YOU SURROUNDED YOURSELF WITH A CONVOY OF HATRED TO MURDER ME I...

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??Isaiah 63:11-12 KJVAAE??
[11] Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people, saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? where is he...

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I

These days I forgive myself everything. After all
I'm alone and unhappy so I give myself a little treat
whenever possible. On summer nights I remember
the good women who loved me but live with their husbands now.

This...

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I have watched my youngest son
while nurses give him baths
using diverse models of health optimization 
ranging from PositivEnergy Promotion,
restorative ego-eco
I-Thou therapies,
to lower, not too much NegativEnergy, concerns
for hygienic technology professional management,
anger and fear commercialized insurance...

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In school it was all about Greek and Latin at a stretch it proposed
                     ...

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Each day’s (we’re alive) one more leaf that has fallen
from tree (Fate’s collusion?), our edifice grown
with the help of light garnered from sources outside
of our provenance, moisture, and minerals,
‘cheap’s’ turned to ‘gold,’ not by Chemistry’s...

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It was 3AM.
I had too many cups of rum and I wanted to hear your voice
before I fell into a drunken stupor. 
You didn't answer my two FaceTime calls or texts so
it got my mind...

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Sunday morning early, five a.m to be
precise, my mind awakes, then gently succours
the body to arise from one’s mundane sleep. I
then transfer to Britain via 1ZB, listening
to the English football commentary, it’s worth
the lack of...

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On becoming a night owl...,
no matter whether or not ya give a hoot

especially after feeling super charged
watching the second night of 
Democratic National Convention conclave
ushering a hint of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Men and women are born...

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In backyards of my history
lies a tidal river
of ebb and flow revolutions.

These revolutions are normally no-news evolutions
back up toward headwaters of crisis and opportunity,
diastatic and polyphonic purest capital boundary roots
for future's river flow investment
out-flowing down
from...

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When you and your wife visited,
you shared a question asked by a pastor
of a raped
and thereby pregnant
vulnerably young and questioning parishioner.

"If your unborn child survived
his first year
and walked back into your home
do you think you...

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Poetical Journey Of Pizzaz

Apple Blossom Orchids are spreading across my grandmother's land like a whiZ
Zestfully all around one's earnest expectations like the smallest of fleA
Bites a person's imagination like they're singing a song and plaY
Years...

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...and the Demon spoke,
its voice deep and mellow like smooth satiny chocolate,
"There is more, much more than good and evil,"
the words thunderously whispered.
The verdant emerald green of the forest quivering at the sound,
drawing in upon...

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