Long Sunburned Poems

I love you only because I love you
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
Between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates...

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Sonnet LXXXI-LXXXIX

Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew...

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I wanna trade in my stubby spindleshanks...,

(a poor excuse for legs),
and get me the latest
sophisticated prosthetics advancements,
whereat integration of cultured stem cells
into custom made appendages
allows, enables, and provides
unfortunate recipients of amputations
to experience sensations.

No more will...

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Ancient Greek and Roman Epigrams

That country wench bewitches your heart?
Hell, her most beguiling art’s
hiking her dress
to seduce you with her ankles' nakedness!
Sappho, fragment 57, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stranger, rest your weary legs beneath...

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I am whatever you say I am 
currently I'm the eyes of the world
it's what they discovered when
daddy tied a pork chop around my neck just to get the dog to play with me
first time...

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After many years I paid a rare visit to the woods from my long ago childhood days,
Things have changed since boyhood, the bees are silent, the landscape has changed,
Gone, honey-laden scented flowers of the old...

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Into the buoyant blue of a summer sky
I throw my fortune and my hopes.
With wings and wonder I survey
the world above and need some time
up there before descending back to earth.

Advancing throttle up I climb,...

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Ancient Greek and Roman Epigrams

Stranger, rest your weary legs beneath the elms;
hear how coolly the breeze murmurs through their branches;
then take a bracing draught from the mountain-fed fountain;
for this is welcome shade from the burning...

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Players So Short

Even if my players are still so short,
Can count on God when on the court;
Defend and depend,
Until very end;
Trough trials and tribulations did support.

Jim Horn

Will Believe and Receive
.
Remember when in God we always...

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Sassy sobriquets schooled sissy spindleshanks...
studious sexagenarian skinny scruffy scribe

My utmost humblest apology
for inducing the following
cerebral calisthenics upon your cranium,
but the cost of friendship
with yours truly 
(me – a foo fighting,
eagle eyed, beatle browed, beastie boy...

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Please do not hold me within those claws of unworthiness
As if your judgment alone DEFINES me!
Get out of here, you little baby,
You don’t recognize what’s good for you!
Push away the peas,
But you’re still going to...

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Away to Vermont on a Dr's appointment. Coming back and riding the Ferry to New York my wife Judy and I decided to stop off at Panera Bread for lunch thru the Drive thru. I...

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I watched on her journey; the one she’d make alone;
Down roads of pain and solitude on toward her final home.
My mind went back those many years when we were both still young;
The warm and endless...

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Before my wife and I
Broke out of our shell
For spring break in Miami
Just the two of us on our first vacation in 30 years

All our kids wished us well
Though I detected an ache in their...

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After my boat capsized
out in the ocean,
had a lucky rubber raft,
which I stayed afloat on,
where it seemed like days,
I was lost at sea,
with nothing but the vast sky,
and the endless waves and sea,
had my emergency...

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If you ever espy a latitudinally
and longitudinally challenged
older yet shopping savvy woman,
(wedded to yours truly
for almost twenty six years),
who stands approximately
four feet and ten inches
a strong hunch that gal
stacks up as mine missus,
she dons costumed...

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The bike was loaded and packed
The duffle bag strapped to the rack
The air was crisp when we started out at dawn
In the early morning hours we were gone 
Down the road with the wind on...

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Pool Table Felt on the Bloodstained Mattress

A quiet giggle
It’s not my stomach growling, “feed me.”
A young girl who wouldn’t love a millionaire
A stereo left on overnight
Warmed motor that melts a plastic beer cup
Teeth brushed a...

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It's dead December, we're getting nowhere, ready
for vaccine like a starving tribe shoved from behind
under the bridge, kicking some dust along the way.
A hand holds my arm, hoarse voices coaxes

     Life's...

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Sitting watching a June summer king establish his reign over hazy hills and dusty dales,
I could just hear a sharpened scythe's ring across green fields cutting away at the corn,
With the hustle and bustle of...

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Daytime,sunshine...crystal clear
burning through clear blue atmosphere
Tanning laserays of light
Ignite solar candled lantern aisles by night

Silent meadows and sheep grazed pastures bare
Summer's yield matching colors grown in pairs
Travelers' eyes steal glimpses of the ancient surreal
Clever celestial...

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Sassy sobriquets schooled sissy spindleshanks...
studious skinny scruffy scribe

Scathing, scolding, screaming,
scorning, searing, sing,
sociopathic sarin soaked skewed
squirt, sputtering, squawking, sleepily
staggering, stabbing, swaggering
sweltering sadistic, sarcastic,

savage, systemically systematically
stigmatized, supersized saber sharp
schick shaving, shunned, sabotaged,
scarred, scorched, smote, sanguine,
stippled, speckled schizophrenic
sensibility,...

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Kicking up dust with my Mary Jane shoes
too many years ago now to be counted
in the darkening shadows of one bronze summer day
I was holding his hand, with assurance and trust
filled with concoctions of sugared...

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How many years?  I'm not even sure
It was late in the day, as the sun turned to rust
I was holding his hand, and trembling with fear
Kicking up dust with my Mary Jane shoes
filled with...

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Running With the Wild
     By Dane Smith-Johnsen

It was back in the year 1963,
Among horses wild and free; --
Many manes and tails untamed by the breeze
Were seen dashing past dunes without trees.
And...

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