Long Sunday school Poems

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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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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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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I stood at the top of our dirt driveway looking back at our two-story house. It's kind of a long house where, from our second-floor windows, you can see cars driving on the lane road...

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I don't see you.
I've been searching my whole life,
But still, I don't see you.

When I was a wee lad
I looked for you ...
My mother's smile,
My father's toil,
My brother's refuge,
My sister's amity ...
I didn't see you.

Thanksgiving,...

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So here's my question for this dawning day,
like a WinWin ruminating message in a bottle
floating through a LoseLose climate sea
felt still foggy from last night,
some mysterious how now;

One of many
health related strategic WinLose issues
tuning out...

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I’ve Been So Lucky in Life! (1&2)
(Only Raped 5 Times Metaphorically)

Poem’s Introduction
My poetry has always been about transparency. It’s about letting go of an effort to be liked by others, and allowing others to gravitate...

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I stumbled over Paul Tillich's translation
of the MessiahMentor's Other Great Commission.

The Great Commission we learned in Sunday School
was to go out and convert the barbarians
and savages to Christianity.

Yet this Other Great Commission feels like a...

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The problem with trying to prove clairaudience, clairsentince, out-of-body, and Near Death Experiences to a Mudblood is not as simple
as it could have been.
Is it because Para-science is totally unsubstantiated?
Not in MY family.
Scientifically un-sound?
Sure, by...

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I grew up and out on a four family-owned,
and cooperatively-organized,
extended matriarchal farm.

Four interdependent 1940s through 1970s patriarchally managed businesses,
without substantial questions about who should wear pants,
yet with a surprising matriarchal cooperative understory.

The boxers outnumbered the...

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Once again I tip the scale
And mutter, whoever invented it was a man from hell.
It was not a woman who created weights for size
For women can look past the outer shell
And search deep for what...

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The number of folks sitting
on the back porch
waiting
for peace to strike,
like waiting for my garden to grow
without yet having planted it.

The number of people
noticing that chronic victims
suffer from critical victimization events,
minus the number who also...

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Now in my decline from a time back then
  I remember the days in a life when I was ten,
when we lived in a shadow much greater
  at the foot of the mount...

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Yang dear,
could you please give us a brief LeftBrain summary
of relationships you find between
the language of Zero-Sum Sacred Ecology
and the double-bind information 
PolyPathic = Not(NotPolyCultural)?

Sure,
just imagine your LeftDominant hemisphere
as your Western Colonizing hemisphere
yet not quite...

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Aunt Mary was a small and wiry mother
of six;
four by birth
and two by informal adoption.

She sang in a small querulous voice
yet spoke boldly
filled with loving EarthMother
indigenous wisdom choices.

Aunt Mary was a serenely quiet mentor
and suspiciously...

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Telling tales or stories is a favourable pasttime;
But using pictures to tell stories of past and present,
Yours remind me of days back in time,
Would not be all very  recent,
Last ones of grateful recline
To golden...

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Image of Grandparents Country Home from my family collection

The Two Drivers In My Life

In my younger years ...
I got to know the souls of my parent's worlds,
were as distant as our known solar system.
Mom was...

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Woke up this morning
 on the wrong side of the tracks.
Left out leaving for all the right reasons
 and all the wrong facts.

Caught a ride with a traveling preacher
 in a beat up van.
Said he...

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My opinion on religion Take 1
I am in the unexpected throes of spring cleaning
Suddenly with no warning 
7 people are unexpectedly arriving in a few minutes for an Easter lunch.
Easter lunch already?
Why didn’t anyone mention...

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This is a story about Freddie and Flo,
They lived in Baltimore a long time ago.
It might be called a May-September romance
And shows how love can blossom if it's given a chance.
Flo taught Sunday School, her...

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I worry we co-invest in big private and public corporate assault
on Earth,
on environmentalism,
on longer-term ecologic.

Really, honey?
That's too bad.
Why not also see long-term assault
as the unintended outcome of short-term neglect
of cooperative care-giving,
healthy nurturing behavior,
Golden Rule economic...

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Rhyme  Quatrain



Telling tales or stories is a favourable pasttime;
But using pictures to tell stories of past and present,
Yours remind me of days not so recent,
And ones of grateful recline
To golden years so sublime.

Mother, telling...

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Thinking back on my all White
but One,
all Right
but One,
classroom learning experience,

I can see why
many of my straight white male classmates,
especially those with early varsity team excellence
and above average grade point systems
tipping toward future capital-valued employment
might...

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My toilet was a hole outside
                             ...

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NINETEEN FORTY TWO
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS


As a young man in Jersey I wanted to be a cop
One sunday morning that dream came to a stop
Our nation had been a victim of a vicious attack
By an aggressive...

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