Long Text Poems

(Created using the bAbBlE sentence generator, various text excerpts, and a minuscule bit of human editing.) 

And she smells good without keeping all ...

Beef, sitting lonely on that lies floating on the tufted floor. "Surely,"...

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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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Ah yeah ah oh
Ah yeah ah oh
So scared and fragile...
So weak for only awhile...
Unfaithful me is as cold as glaciers of disgrace glamorized 
Unfaithful you is as hot as fire of desire, burning...you and I...

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I Have Labored Sore
anonymous medieval lyric (circa the fifteenth century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have labored sore / and suffered death, 
so now I rest / and catch my breath.
But I shall come /...

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"The Sleeper and The Supernaturalist"


The Sleeper
shone as she walked 
through the Woods

shining alive 
like nothing
natural could

caught 
in the moonlight 
unaware

the innocent
red-caped roses stared
the trees whispered,

"beware, beware"

barefoot softly 
the Supernaturalist 
transfigures instead

from under shine 
she bares...

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Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has...

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(In a Lush Garden Somewhere Out There)

The student stands where shifting sands of thought,
Once firm with reason, now elusive truths are sought.
Its splendor wanes, a threadbare, fading strand,
A quest for wisdom, in this digital land.

Sage:...

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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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Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain...

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I saw a girl at the museum. I had to take her number
It was like my heart woke up from a long slumber

She was admiring a Picasso painting.
 I knew nothing about art so I...

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Winter Awakens My Care
anonymous Middle English poem, circa 1300
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 my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything...

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"The Swoon Hypothesis" - Part 2



Arimathea stands next to you and I on the deck, soon we are back in Nazareth, you press into my palm, 
“A very rare Dubunni coin” you say - on...

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Oft in My Thought
by Charles D'Orleans
translation by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet...

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Sixty some odd years ago, when I was just a kid, our home was on the very edge of town.
The man that lived next door to us - a Mr. - O. M. Crabb -...

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Reveren’ Carlton Whitney was the pastor of our church, and someone I looked up to as a child. 
Six foot six, with piercing eyes, a booming voice, and yet…his disposition, thankfully - was mild.

The very...

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[This poem 'No God Of  Mine' was seemingly confounding readers as
to its meaning. Ordinarily, if I felt a poem wasn't  cutting it, I'd delete
it, but on this occasion, I've been asked to explain it... so here goes.]


By...

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The biggest funeral I've ever attended...


Thelma was a waitress at the diner on the corner of 4th and Oak, across from Ron’s DX, in Abilene.
They had an old brass register that rang when it was...

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“Sophisticated lady” gropes the table at her bedside, blindly taking random swipes to kill the morning scream 
That shatters little privacies she shares with no one else, and steals, with full impunity, her one recurring...

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This is one excited kid and one PROUD father...



I took my son to the lumberyard last Tuesday afternoon. The day itself, though toasty, was the best in quite some time.
And when we’d finished shopping -...

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Many of us have a favorite possession from when we were young, and this 
93-year old gentleman is no exception.

               ...

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He has the biggest heart.

He enjoys doing things for other people

Just because it’s the right thing to do, and

Knowing he made someone happy makes him happy too.

He’ll do whatever he can to satisfy

Everyone around him.

But...

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NOTE: THIS IS ONLY THE 1st half of this piece-- its 2nd half is posted separately due to Poetry Soup's poem-lengths-limitation. Be sure to check out the balance of this poem = "Tiny Town Events"...

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Hey…did I ever tell you ‘bout the greatest baseball game,
Or should I say…the one that gave “Ol' Babe” his famous name?

Like several other great ones, there were many hits that day, 
And if it hadn't...

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The greatest performance of my life.  
Howard’s proud piece de resistance award  on Poetry Nook for my magnum opus “Rush Amid The Rapids” in their daily member section.
After endless hours of toil, tribulation,...

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Note: This is the 2nd half of one of my MANY long story works, and the 1st half can be accessed, of course, at "poems by Mark Stellinga" on the soup.
My wife and I were...

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