Long Swollen Poems

It's Halloween!
Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give...

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It's Halloween!
Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (II)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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Poems about the Coronavirus II


This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers IV



Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is your concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm...

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What Good Are Our Tears?
by Michael R. Burch

What good are our tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence...

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A Stolen Memory
A Mirthful Chorus
By Sy Roth 


We surrounded him 
Asked to let go.
She stared at the misshapen face,
Unshaven sandpapery skin 
Eyelids a tabula rasa
Fluttery sere skin
And we could see the humor blossoming in his...

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Math speaks through us
within us
of cognitive landscapes
imagined still and/or moving.

Primal metrics are rational and symmetrical,
good as true as straightforward,
complex creation story problems
unfolding with precise answers,
right as at least not not ecologically wrong,
ecopolitically suboptimal perhaps,
yet at...

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How the Nation of Islam saved my granddaughter 
from Catrina Bell queen pin gang leader it was a warm 
day i was suffering from traumatic brain injury raising 
five children including my granddaughter only four...

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Dream-worker 
delves deeply into my dream;

vibrations fondle anticipation
foreplay wakes wide-eyed 
swells of liquid libido quake the rendezvous edge -
a primordial being in his prime
a masculine ego quest for affaire d’amour;
her night-loving body 
c h a...

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CRISIS SESSION FBI HUMAN RESOURCE DIVISION NON-REDACTED
FBI: HELLO WHAT IS YOUR EMERGENCY

AGENT BROWN: HELLO THIS IS AGANT BROWN AND THAT DARK PLACE IS RETURNING AGAIN I AM IN CRISIS AGAIN 

FBI: OKAY WE ARE HERE...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VIII

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school and college student. 

Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that...

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He just appeared to me, like wispily curling 
Chimney smoke, 
One grim and early morning in the very midst of 
Decembers briefest days, on the highest slope,
Toiling through my daily round; where, slowly 
Driving up...

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(Continuing the trip through Hell of Dante with poet Virgilio)

Pah-peh Sah-tan, Pah-peh Sah-tan al-ept!”,
Started Pluto with his hoarse voice toss
And that gentle wise, who any knowledge kept,

Told to encourage me: “don’t have a loss 
By...

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Headlights messaged through midnight windows 
Curtainless glass unable to subdue the urgency 
Car obtained in street nearby was theirs temporarily
Three hour drive to ship leaving island next morning

Two sixteen year old girls barely registered surprise...

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"The Precipice"



In the Autumn 
she wore a wedding veil
A cold winter would lift it
Kiss her lips passionately to 
speak words of 
LOVE
on a 
late roll call

“Well, that’s insanity for you” 
some snakes would hiss
others rapture-faced
on...

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UNQUOTABLE QUOTES: L (50) - Tongue-Teasers

The « early bird catches the worm » only because the worm has not woken up yet.

« I don’t love you ! I hated your father ! » - must...

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I was so anxious to get away but I did not realize what was on the way
I got a standing ticket because all the tickets have been sold out some on the black market, others...

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Moving on ???

I have come to wonder – as time passes – why ?,
the lady brings tears to my heart – makes me cry.
This lady who took in hand, in holy of holies, in mouth,
resurrecting...

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"Heart"  

Deep fissures formed
in the cracks of 
the nowhere place
where time leeched
bleeding claret 
through the green 
veined blues

protean bit by bit
the flesh disappears
prematurely 6ft under
mulch for rebirth
the subcontinent
conscientious conscience 
inward reaching

the divine central tableau...

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Mother nature oh! Rose of roses!
Mother of all flowers' and smell,
Ylang Ylang! You don't know what it causes!
An aphrodisiac turns you on like hell!

Sandalwood with its masculine warmth poses,
Rosemary clears the head, you can tell,
Peppermint...

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I know
you know
you stole our property,
our mutual possession,
our sense of co-ownership,
of belonging together
to grow our health forever.

I know
you took it for your sole ungrateful possession,
to use for your self recreating purposes,
not a subject for open...

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Boob jobs and bomb jobs

Sisters in arms those tits and those weapons of massive 
destruction sex and death go together in dynamics
thermodynamics psychodynamics fused on the playground 
of this life of this poem on which...

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Angles of Mercy
By
Kevin L Fairbrother

There is not to many of us that can say that the owe their existence on this earth to a Native in a Foreign country, in my case I can say...

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"The Unlit Flame at Blue Feather’s Cross Roads"



Words these days are seldom Red
like drops of lifeless blood falling cold on a hot frying pan,
sentences are scattered, stuck in Go Nowhereland,
semi-solid, immovable coagulating gelatinous, turning dark...

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