Long Students Poems

Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

This poem has also been titled "Epitaph for a Child of...

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Where Does the Butterfly Go?
by Michael R. Burch

for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
Where...

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These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems ...






Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“... what rough beast ... slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”?W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a...

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It's peaceful here in my backyard.
The crows sound happy
with warm October sunlight.

I just read about a deadly gathering in Las Vegas.
Absence of sun-drenched peace.
Inconvenient this time of lost loss.
Death is always inconvenient,
even when invited.

A veteran,
about...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems IX

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school student and during my first two years of college.

Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of...

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In one sense,
the Cafe CoOp
started as my therapeutic retirement dream.

But,
in quite another
the CoOp goes back to when I was eight,
and I thought,
assumed really,
everyone indulged in Thought Experiments
about what would my optimal Eden Paradise.
restoring peace and...

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Next day new school day. 
Amadeus was the first to
Wake then he woke DJ and 
Damali And all three went for
The showers. Twenty minutes 
Later they woke everybody else 
Including the adults. The Hakim 
Children...

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Truth is a feather 
pushed off to the other side.

Truths are a body of feathers
within which our bodies reside.

OK, students of life’s healthiest purposes and meanings,
it’s time to regather, if you would be so kind.

Namaste.

[Silence]

[My...

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One day not so long ago 
I walked
Never alone
For the world 
Is always my home

It was a late
Spring snow
Yet I felt
Invisible red roses
Offering sweetest perfume
To my nose and soul

There’s such warmth 
In snow-filled winter
No bitterness
No...

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Thanks for your letter
asking for a free Taoist consult
on how to bring God talk
and experience
back into our Big Agri-MilitantIndustrialized Busyness Schools
and possibly our extended family lives,
on into our inside Holy of Holies,
our Climates of PanEntheistic...

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Three voices required,
Professor,
and two students:
Yang as Fr. Time
YinYin as Sr. Gaia

In a college classroom with Win-Win Game Theory written on whiteboard.

Professor: 
Today we are going to role play 
a Win-Win enculturation game.

We will define enculturation...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s Courbet: Elegy 8 by T. Wignesan

Blanches oeuvres ouvertes
résident dans les jours
la surface du banc de travail est noire
les géraniums-lierres
les fougères et les adragans
accumulent leurs oeuvres et jours:
La toile noire de Courbet
un...

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Flirt with Whitney
Flirt with fear 
Life is good
But I rather be anywhere but here
Body aches from pushing out tears
Driving on the road of life
Eyes is watery
So I can't steer 
And I'm getting dizzy 
Stomach very...

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I'm working on this Systems Theory

All existing formal religious traditions
and informal spiritual experience 
of Great Sacred EcoLogical Transitions
[e.g. Holocene to 
Green AnthroScene;
HolySpirit to
Whole Holonic Natural Communion Systems]

Originally,
through our divine monotheistic
and/or polytheistic
and/or atheistic naturalistic branches
shared as...

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"Hey, you philosophysing Hindu. Give me a break, Buddy. I was just pulling your leg. [...] I want the rest of the story. Really, I mean it.” Theson said nothing. [...] “I can see you’re...

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I suppose you might have missed out on Paul Feyerabend's,
and especially Thomas Kuhn's Problem of Incommensurabiity.

Oh, not at all.
I have not looked at science or culture
or language
or even your attempts at communication
quite the same since...

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Back Door Side Door Front Door : Which door might a Confucian take
 
..................for René ETIEMBLE (Jan. 26, 1909 – Jan. 7, 2002)*

In homage - dedicated to the Chair Professor of Comparative Literature
.................at the prestigious...

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I was a seventeen year old senior in a coed, catholic high school.  Our gym classes however were still all boys and all girls.  My senior year we had gym every other day...

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Sandy Hook Call to Love
by Michael R. Burch
 
Our hearts are broken today
for our children's small bodies lie broken;
let us gather them up, as we may,
that the truth of our Love may be spoken;
then, when...

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We have something in common, a fellow I talk to now and then. We’re about the same age and perhaps the only ones in the diner who think our past lives are interesting. So when...

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Greetings to those who would willingly seek admission to theater of the absurd. Zoltan Goliath and Otis Trench are masters of the avant-garde genre silent musicals for the imaginary stage, an art form sui generis....

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s Twentythird Legal by T. Wignesan

Le vingt-troisième légal

pendant la guerre le peuple devient obéissent de nouveau
plein du respect (et) de la confiance les enfants naïfs dans la foi
la gouvernance nécessaire  ...

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* This poem was written for a contest originally, but was used by Professor Anne-Marie Thornton of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, to teach her WAR POETRY class in the spring semester of 2017. My...

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Her small angelic face ...

Once a place where broad smiles bloomed like butterflies on marigolds,
is streaked with the furrows that countless tears have etched into the
layers of dust and dirt and explosive residue that now...

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Long in the tooth male doth recount, reflect, reimagine...
his woebegone damn dental daze today May 5th, 2021 

No particular rhyme nor reason
garden variety indentured flunky (me)
revisits his salmagundi salad days, 
when oral blight smote 
left...

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