Long Thicket Poems

I’m in distress
I can’t express
How I feel deep down inside
This feeling is a terrible tide
How do I impress
Everyone here in excess?
I’m just here to simply abide
By God’s Law, I don’t subside

My tears are diamonds in...

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Villanelles

The villanelle is a poetic form based on repetition, with a double refrain. 



Villanelle: The Divide
by Michael R. Burch

The sea was not salt the first tide...
was man born to sorrow that first day, 
with the...

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I Know The Truth
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I know the truth?abandon lesser truths!
There's no need for anyone living to struggle!
See? Evening falls, night quickly descends!
So why the useless disputes?generals, poets, lovers?

The wind...

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Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux

These are poetic forms similar to villanelles, with refrains (repeated lines) and sometimes double refrains.



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

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot...

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Pellucid pachyderms wade across
the purpling River Manjees
and Tozzath watches from the bank, 
the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud,
his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias,
whose lacey petals flutter
like the wings of long-dead...

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The Picture of Dorian Gray: Paint Me As An Event
The Picture of Dorian Gray, a decent fanciful novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde, published in 1890. The novel, the only one written by Wilde, had...

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Once the night had fallen upon a sleepless slumber,
Whence the winter woke me when the third was three in number.

I sense that a wince doth lurk and wear which wicked gaze,
Of conniving shadows cast between...

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A wince doth lurk wearing which wicked gaze,
Of conniving cast shadows ‘tween my windowpanes.

Gazing through the window’s diaphanous gelid glass, 
I see a flushing fluorescent misty haze of frothy brass.

It floats aloft the frost of...

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Two little kittens; he’s Rum and she’s Raisin
Lived in a house near the zoo.
Rum asked his friend, “Would it not be amazing
to go catch a mouse or a shrew?”

Raisin said, “Rum, we should not be...

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The Sinai Rose finch, oblivious to the commotion in the nearby city, busily gathered dry grass and floral fodder to repair her nest, disturbed by a human behemoth, snatching the thorny brambles which hid the...

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If out of darkness comes light, then my life must be one ginormous ray of sunshine right about now. Coming out of a 14-year classroom coma, I am now awake, yet I continue to slumber...

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Struggle to write

Witnessed courtesy the following poetic sight
especially when dark shadows foretell edge of night
twilight zone expanding
into outer limits of width and height
obscuring webbed wide world
subsequently where black tentacles alight.

This poetic prologue feeble exercise to...

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Hear the screeching of the Nighthawk, as its talons grapple
At the tail ends of the moon's rising, dragging it ever upwards, unto
The center of the blackened shroud, of the universe.
This celestial light casts illusion's rays...

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“Blue Sky Eye and The Hope Angels”



It came to be 
that many forgot
the messages imparted 

prior to arrival
instructions were encoded 
inside all our vessels 

we were berthed 
locked and loaded 
waiting for ignition

but we were...

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As a youngster he had dreamt of moving to a potato farm in Ireland

To escape from the brown rot of German post-world war II contamination

Just another plot on the map to sufficient existence and to...

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As my way is made among the thorns,
An inner beauty a rose adorns.
A darkness present, tries to hide,
Still, the rose blooms bright inside.

The thicket of thorns, of brambles too,
Meant to discourage my getting through
To reach...

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I discovered miscellaneous meaningless hodgepodge...

dating back circa: Age of computer antiquity
mine signature worthless gibberish
found Earthling dumbfounded
for further waste of time inquire
about trivial details constituting 
more'n six electronic new pages
the following an excerpt from book of
Matthew...

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Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch 
 
Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way
 
and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering,...

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She’s out there chasing a cricket

Through bush, through shrub & through thicket

Together they hop

Fugitive, cop

But when she gets it, she just wants to lick it!
 

A cat whose vet took his eye

Just cannot quite understand...

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“Life is like a country park”, the peasant said to the King.

The King so sure of his profound answer,
Looked coldly into the peasants eyes
and without a murmur burst out into laughter,
Tell me peasant why would...

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‘so glad ya made it out alright,’ she says.
‘i’m feelin’ a whole lot better knowin’ that the crops’re bein’ taken care-uh.”
you nod, smile politely
and step out of your car straight into drying mud.
‘i just don’t...

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(Must be read, while listening to the music link embedded in this poem, for without the music, the magic is missing).

W. E. Soundtrack- Abel Korzeniowski
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxO1csWNKmg



"dans l'heure bleue deux"



He sits at his desk
like some frozen soulless
vintage...

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A perfect radiant day of golden complexion infused the Jefferson brothers to travel down the narrow path, a mile from their home to the Ebb Water Creek.
Their goal to hook a line of catfish was...

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Do you hear them?

Woodland creature amidst the thicket, drawn, oblivious to indifference beneath 
heavenly luminescence.
And I, baring admiration in acknowledgement, plea to the awakening of your 
fellow ear as companion.
Fields breathe life of their expulsion.
Shall...

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I adored being out on the immense, rushing sea, and I had myriad dreams,
Like slumbering, yellow days of summer, with its vibrant, gorgeous themes.

My dream was for a great sea adventure, when the blush was...

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