Long Sunday Poems

It may have been the devil himself who prompted the kids in my schoolyard back in 1947 to chant "Patsy Foley's roly-poly from eating too much ravioli."

At first, no one could remember who started the...

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I see people moving, but going nowhere
I see people moving with their hands thrown in the air
I see people moving but they have nothing to share
Bags and pans, old kettle, and old man
The scavenger, the...

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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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"As other spirits sail on music, mine, oh my love, swim on your perfume." Charles Baudelaire

"Sometimes you find an old bottle from which the soul returns." 
Charles Baudelaire

"Smell is a Word. Perfume is Literature."

"There are...

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Please be informed: 

The Nigerian youths have agreed together in love and oneness that in 2023 presidential election and in every other elections, whether state or local government. We will not vote for anyone who...

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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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It had been a hellish week.

On Monday
my lonely and tired AfricanAmerican husband
told me, as gently as possible,
that what I had hoped was a temporary separation
is to be extended into perpetuity.

This separation had been scheduled to...

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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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One of the least talked about,
yet most problematic issues
for regenerating  

Global
social-psychological
mental and physical
health and public safety
movements

Well fed and watered
to empower and enlighten interfaith
action and reflection,
song and dance
liturgical and fire-circle
contemporary-indigenous wisdom

Is to explore together
how and...

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I am fairly new to this Norwick community.
If I recall correctly
we have about forty thousand households here
where the Connecticut River
conjoins the Mohegan and Iroquois Rivers;
originally deep rich virgin eco-forest 
of and for harmonic rhythm and...

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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 would imagine Adam Smith's invisible cooperative economic
self-and-Other-investment hand,
at least during Christian Sunday morning services,
looked and sounded and felt very much
like the One Invisibly-Organic-Holistic-Enlightened MindBody of Christ.

I would further imagine
both he and George Washington,
at least...

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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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Goodness, I nearly lost my balance on the spiral seashells and broken sea stone chipping matrix.
My quaint obsession with marine life and that skyline paradox blossoming so tantalisingly,  might be a source of some...

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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 many new GEMS, improvements to previous verses and improved...

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The three little pigs came to the ball
Tried to blow the castle down
It didn’t work
It was made of solid gold
So they gave up and sat at their trough 
Ate noisily 
And snorted quite a lot

They...

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A Night On A Wharf

The couple decide to walk. The boardwalk still lit at this late hour guides them. They walk hand in hand,..whispering softly with small talk...solemn.,. lonely , yet together. The walk is...

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It was 1968 we'd gathered again in the school auditorium my tiny hands sweating only five years old while my name was called in all of this cold  
civil rights riots plagued my little...

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Special Agent Alan King arrived in his Buick dragging my husband to Foss park for his failed lie detector test where I wore wires pregnant for the FBI my husband was scared to death after...

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These words of love I give to you, my dear
to have comfort in the stillness of time
and meld two souls to keep love's wishes near
when the length of the years and age will climb
I will...

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TITLE:
       Xenophobia

Heed the warning
This isn't for the faint of heart
Verbalizing my deepest yearnings 
They're bound to be a bit tart...

Because where I'm from is called the Bible Belt
Where folks...

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Something strange

and unexplainable comes this way,
this way, it comes to us sly and fast, 
some say, perhaps, 
it has already arrived, 
it walks unseen, in the midst of all, of us 

we go about our...

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The Ash Can  ©

I got the call on Sunday night.  I was traveling on business.  When I looked at the caller ID
 I wondered why my husband’s boss would be calling me....

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I’m A “Street Fighter” 
You see the “Wings” CHUN 
LI
“BRUCE WAYNE”
 “LEROY”
“LU”
KAME
“THE LAST DRAGON BREATHS”
You don’t want “NUN”-CHUCK
NORE IS ANY ENTITY
Check my IP MAN
my Impulse 
 “Ki”
I’m the “1ONE” Fearless 
Jackie’s First Strike “Unleashed”
In a...

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It was September 
Of one thousand 
Nine hundred seven
The end of summer
With apples lying thickly
Under the apple trees
And the smell of Autumn
Covering the grass
Filled with ripe yellow
And orange squash
He was born in a little
Wooden house...

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