Long Thereafter Poems

The Sun Is a Liar



It’s been quite some time since I've awoke early enough to meet the sun coming over the horizon. As I gazed out the window from my bedroom window seat, the sky...

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Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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Additional free advice to those* who would be King from the THIRUK-KURAL with Commentary
[*like presidents, prime ministers, dictators of declining (falling or fallen) nations or even empires]

K442: urranOy niikki uraa amai munkaakkum
   ...

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These are prophetic poems and apocalyptic poems ...



The Vision of the Overseer’s Right Hand
by Michael R. Burch

“Dust to dust ...”

I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color...

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"Fragments and crumbs of life, all the little pieces"

                    John Ruskin, 1853


I think of youth’s sweet...

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"A dressed day has disrobed into the depth of a drawer's nightstand." 

(Oh, how positively awesome that what can be sorted out in such an explanatory pattern that a difference would maketh a day.)

The muskiness...

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The reading of Villon poems at West Berlin’s Free University, Winter Semester 1957-58
                      ...

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The Legacy of Ain't Barbie
By Franklin Price
03/23/2022

“Ain't Barbie” was her handle, Barbara Price her married name
She was my wife, for most my life, this is how she played the game
Her roots were from the North...

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En-trumped

There are many en-tities. Narrative psychologist speak of living and telling 
a story. Our lives should be as we en-live them and en-story them. We tell 
our tale as we see it, at the moment...

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_______

Well now this is sad and tragic 
For both of us to hear 
You and I at cross purposes 
Ever our fate, my Dear

I just found your correspondence
Last letter that you sent 
It was, I...

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A man who lacks a sleep schedule.
In a home that houses not only him
But his very own mother
His daughter who comes equipped with
Her very own mother too

Honey girl rises with the sun and sets with...

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Herpetologist meets actress (Cameron Diaz).
If he's funny he's me.
South America or Africa (on location).
In a diamond mind.
The protagonists (lovers), the diamonds, the miners and the minders.
By minders we mean watchers, organizers, supervisors.
As all art must:...

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Officer Gwendolyn Becker - a “newbie” - at Newark P. D. down in 'Joizey', was combin’ the streets for a couple o’ thieves who’d been holdin’ up stations and stores...
When - back in an alley...

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I remember my mindbody would tense
sometimes
then relax into confusion
while non-consiliently reading Bucky Fuller's "Synergetics 2."

I also remember,
and too often reweave,
Fuller's stream of thought ecoconsciousness
as I read  Beck and Cowan on the well-timed subject 
of...

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Pride and Prejudice: The Lacking Margins

Pride and Prejudice, a passionate novel by Jane Austen, published anonymously in three volumes in 1813. A masterpiece of English literature, composed with penetrating wittiness and exquisite character delineation, it...

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“I have five friends; a Christian, a Buddhist, a Sikh, a Hindu and a Muslim. Each speaks of a different God or truth. Who should I believe?”

“Belief? Is that not a mind game? Is not...

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Unquotable quotes: Teachers – XXI

The pupil, the bitch and the walnut tree, the more the teacher beats them, the better they be.
In the old days, teachers were born to the métier like poets; today softwares...

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Approximately three plus days elapsed...
without yours truly experiencing urge to defecate

Neither bloating nor constipation
arose, but one nondescript anguished
logophile anticipated intestinal blockage,
hence prophesying worse case scenario

I (predicated in direction for an adult)
ingested three Dulcolax tablets
and subsequently...

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An old farmer, his wife and little daughter,  had dinner in their farm house before going to sleep,

A gang of four thieves, showed up on the farm in a dirty, old truck,  to...

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The Lay of The Best Man - Part One

I’ve seen men ‘good’, and surely, I’ve seen men ‘bad’
So jealous and so envious, I’ve seen men ….sad
Twisted, fuming with anger, and consumed with rage
Callous and cruel...

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The crime is snowed over, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s  Il neige sur le crime

Are we buried under snow holding our silence
in what immense Cimmerian (collision) of terror ?
The mouth kept open in the shriek...

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A healthy dose of invective flourishes at Highland Manor asylum

I hate to be curt,
but welcome to the monkey house
at 2 highland manor drive,
where all manner of imbeciles go berserk.

I and the missus
(thee unfortunate recipient
of poisonous...

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"To My Dear and Loving Husband"
by Anne Bradstreet


If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare me with ye women if...

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Gateway town, Mississippi and Missouri river flooding confluence,
with its celebration of manifest destiny, its looming, iconic archway.
Stainless westward marker, its culture flowed southward for influence
within the lawn-jockey, pink flamingo neighborhoods of moral decay. 

T.S, Eliot,...

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