Long Surfeit Poems

Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch

Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows.
And there you go, skipping your way to school.
And here we are, drifting apart
like untethered balloons.

Here I am, creating "art,"
chanting in shadows,
pale as the crinoline moon,
ignoring your face.

There...

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Sonnets XLII-LI

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

Moonbeams on water?
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night...
So your memories are.

Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter...
So near, yet so far.



A Surfeit of...

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Starlight and Moonlight II

These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …




Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch 

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The night is dark and scary—
under...

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The Rhine Salmon Complaint, Translation of Etiemble’s Complainte d’un salmon du Rhin

						For Yvon Belaval
(A lilting musical poem of varying line length in quatrains with a refrain and much internal
 rhyming; end-rhyme scheme: alternate rhymes in...

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LOVE POEMS IV by Michael R. Burch

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch: original poems and translations about love, passion, desire, lust, sex, dating, romance, relationships and marriage. 



She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful
by...

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Dream state yields deep sleep personifications

Upon lying supine - eye shutter lids
into the land of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,
where the sandman beckons and bids
dead to the webbed wide world,
yours truly immune to wakefulness 
despite being...

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The finite contemplating the infinite
The stardust male and female still flush with light
From exploding stars, seeding new possibilities, our true progenitors.
So that even God Himself must take note of our passing (in its season),
Such elemental...

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It is Monday, today is pay the bills and light shop.
All this after we have been for the morning run.
The dogs are always keen, they trot beside me
as at ten miles an hour we cover...

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Eminent domain, manifest destiny, usurpation...

Maternal grandfather of mine
long since passed among the living;
He left his Motherland 
before onset of Holodomor,
a policy of the Soviet Union 
aimed at the destruction 
of the Ukrainian nation,
the 1932–1933 genocide...

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Eminent domain, manifest destiny, usurpation...

Russian soldiers in general
and Vladimir Putin in particular
perpetrate outright injustice
against Ukrainian population.

Impossible mission to comprehend
the mindset of belligerent, egotistical,
indignant, NeoNazi, tsarist
self anointed totalitarian zealot.

Gross violation of human rights
blatantly carried out
courtesy diabolical...

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An evanescent bouquet of skewed briars,
is how a tinsel laden tawdry essence wickedly unfolds,
scuppered signpost to a fetid human compost,
faint light pendant on soul crushed quantum migrant,
who might chortle at vivid veil flimsy vacuum,
skirt recklessly...

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The grandeur of my life are elusive
Mine ain't melioration; it's oppression
My free life is cramped by chains of servitude
And shout out loud I mustn't 
Because even the power of my tongue is tied
Blank in me...

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An evanescent bouquet of skewed briars,
is how a  tinsel laden tawdry essence wickedly unfolds ,
scuppered signpost to a fetid  human  compost,
faint light pendant on soul crushed quantum migrant,
who might chortle at vivid...

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hanging in the air
humidity’s heaviness . . .
the river’s slow crawl


On the Mississippi lies the beautiful little city where I once lived. How many times I trudged up inclined streets; or leaning forward, red-faced and...

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Were it not a thing impermissible, 
I'd take handfuls of all these silly bits of 
Simulacra, and detritus, dross and debris:
The minutiae and impedimenta that are all these 
Constricting, confining rules and bylaws, codes and...

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Against light source well crafted 
tubular structure appended with eyepiece gazing
offers viewer eye-opening, mind boggling 
instantaneously birthing then vanishing
resplendent myriad colorful 
geometric awesome shifting shapes 
hypnotizing sight seer into a whirling gigolo 
where multifaceted fractals...

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It was after Mom’s dad passed her mom bought canaries.
Grams felt life less lonely, I think, with their singing,
and gave her idea that flying the coop to
live close to my mom could be Southland for...

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In one ghost whisper of a town,
the mourning sunset had bloodshot eyes
A tombstone place that was
	long shadow 
past it’s boomtown prime
Withering eureka hope       fills the short cups
of the abandoned...

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Again the sun will rise and the moon will shine,
Again the night will shudder,again the night will whine.
Again the darkness will beseech, the sky will remorse for its stalemate,
Again her wail will lament in the...

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against light source well crafted 
tubular structure appended with 
eyepiece gazing offers viewer eye-
opening, mind boggling instantaneously 
birthing then vanishing resplendent 

myriad colorful geometric awesome 
shifting shapes hypnotizing sight 
seer whirling gigolo where multi
faceted fractals...

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Brainstorm cometh, damning frontal hemisphere
jamming lookout, noggin perched, roiling thinking
uber wayfaring zealot, drills legendary phalanx.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *...

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Books 

I went to the Frankfurt Book Fair the other day.
It was mind-boggling..Books! 
There were fat books, thin books,
White books, black books, tawny books,
Paperbacks, hardbacks, beautifully bound books,
Pure books, lax books, learned books, lay books,
Plain...

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Part Two

From that moment onwards
Not when the fingerless muscles unclasped
    the indented bones
But from that moment of knowing
   from that very moment of sustenance
That day of human unbelief died unsung
And...

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The breaking,
 the shaking;apace
  my king's fall is rise
   my land is anon taken.
                  ...

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Surfeit of stalagmites barring, hampering my way
Clouds descending from heavenly heights
Obscuring my outlook in the rarified air
Mount Certes challenged all my senses
Aching muscles, pounding heart, gasping intakes of breath
But for all that I felt elated,...

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