Long Sung Poems

When I was a child
Everything was magical
Full of mystery and the unknown
I read hundreds of books
The library my haven
My home
Hours upon hours
Night and day
I read and got lost in text
They supplied me with adventures
Secret journeys
Fun...

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Somehow, 
Forward, and headlong
I knew it was day again

There was a shift in the dark mutterings of the Devil,
Who now refused to sleep as I refused to sing,
Almost an anticipation in his voice,
As if he...

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“SUMMER”



Where 
has Summer 
gone?

The world 
has lost 
Summer

Sweet 
little 
dream

missing 

all those other 
beautiful  
small dreams 

seen as toys
small and 
inconsequential 

casually tossed aside, 
disposable play,
things

pure shining lights
smiling eyes once so bright, 
switched off,

'neath...

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"The Messenger"

Love is rich with 
venom and honey. 

there was a female ...

snake, 
it watched 
with green-eyed 
avarice, covetting
a dove’s nest

the dove, 
was white as snow, 
not young, getting on,
tiny flecks of grey

the dove 
alone,...

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The emotional, mental and spiritual fallout courtesy Colt Gray

Apalachee High School,
located in Winder, Georgia
witnessed an active shooter,
whereby the alleged lone gunman
(actually just a teenager of fourteen years)
killed four people and injured nine more
the latter hospitalized with...

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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 by Michael R. Burch

In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while...

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Why does dawn dress robust morning,
while dusk undresses sight?
Each dawn incarnates another Earth Day
a lifetime of Easter mornings 
redeeming nocturnal sight's revolution,
another therapeutic day of gift-it-forward light,
some longer,
some shorter 
before naked covered night.

Why life?
To uncover...

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The difference between 
bad-old-boy 
competitively evolving 
egg white privilege

And good-girl 
cooperatively revolutionary 
just-us-yolks

Foreshadows a symbiotic contrast
between prophetic performance
and messianic practice,
said Professor Glory
in her Gospel of Permaculture class,
one Friday morning
while sitting on her crass 
desk of...

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You've heard that self-unfulfilling prophecy?
"I love humanity--
it's just people I can't stand."

I love healthy humanity--
it's just uppity and/or snooty people I can't stand

I love cooperative humanity--
it's just overly-competitive individuals I can't stand.

Not so distant from,
I...

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I listened to his heart profusely, 
For a beat like his was much to ponder
I often wondered, his thoughts, and,
A light in me knew, with wretched wonderment
What the whispers in his mutterings meant to me

They...

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It might take a more comprehensive review
to explain why I thought it would make sense
to read
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anger:
Using DBT Mindfulness
and Emotion Regulation Skills to Manage Anger
(Chapman and Gratz)
AND
Evolutionary Enlightenment:
A New...

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Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp...

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Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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It's all frustratingly LeftBrain relativistic,
even nihilistic in its darker 
ruminating 
paranoid about chaotic outcomes form,
said Einstein's post-millennial ghost.

So its all synergetic fractal 4D equivalent SpaceTime,
said Fuller,
in co-arising nondual P = N(NP)/2 (0)-Core response.

Interesting you should...

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We need to talk.

Is this one of those times
where you need to talk
and I must pretend to listen
while you rant?

Well, yes,
if you could extend this favor.

Your topic?

Social Darwinism.

Isn't that the birthplace of unfettered Capitalism
and Fascism
and...

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When passion plants a multicultural seed,
then justice flourishes a polypathic trusting flower.

Permaculture and polyculture, 
grow holistic cause-effect karmic significance 
for our physical, and mental, political and spiritual health.

Permacultural, as I intend it this morning,
refers to...

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THIS WORLD OF DEW

This world? 
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane's bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last? 
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dewdrops beading grass-blades
die before...

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BILLY BOB:
This is ANDERSON WALKINHSHOES... 
Chorus:
Ooh...ooh....new life, new soul. 
Ooh... Ooh... Life on a good road. 
New page will be flipped after life shools me, we, they and you too.
Yeah, That's the truth.
Crazy what billie...

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Premise
The great poem by the italian poet Dante is the DIVINA COMMEDIA
I have tried to translate in english verses of INFERNO (HELL).
It was a very difficult task. 
I expect criticism.

When just the midway of my...

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WHO AM I 

                          I am a woman of abundance,
...

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I sung all the night with the Devil,
It seemed harmony had found itself spooning with dissonance
Not indeed needing to be one or the same
Yes—the light indeed could sustain itself in the midst
Of what then was...

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     by how many badbyes can you measure the length of your day

                 first comes...

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I heard two distinct voices in the night,
Conversing amongst themselves most eagerly
They whispered like children in excitement
Their sardonic mouths sung many savvy tunes
It was Death I could perceive, defending me,
And he, a strange, distant friend
Seemed...

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Nowhere Man

Star dust, the stuff of a fool’s dreams.
Oh !!!, to travel upon star dust streams
- that glorious, never ending journey -
into the realms, the space of many.

This old spirit, seems, not to fit into...

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