Long Threshold Poems

Hark and listen well, if those foretoken in the eyes of hungers lust
Trapped in their illusion, trampling the Stars into dust
Forced with the detestation stench by the swamp of absolute disgust
Thou blackest scorpion be accursed,...

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Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here?among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes,...

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Here I stand outside this door heart beating out of my chest, knowing that once I cross this threshold there will be nothing of me left
I got myself into this predicament I wanted this so...

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That color vileness painted on my face
When coming back my duke to me I saw 
His new squeezing inside much more took place.

He heedful stopped as man hearing to draw;
Because his eye could not reach...

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I walk o u t...

I am lost in unapproachable light—a spectral broth
I am tasting the screaming silence—the archetypal observer
dissects my essence-fossil Passion
a seismic rupture between life/death/rebirth
gnaws at my marrow This dilemma-kudzu
coils tight, constricting tomorrow's breath

Death...

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Date:      August   2051

The 3rd of August  2 morning time.
Holly had labor signals. Her and 
Molly's accommodations were now adjacent. She buzzed the com. Nobody
Answered. She struggled to...

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Quakers build their cooperative politics
on following consensually-held fertile lights.

Buddha adds,
Follow your TruthLight,
back through our universal co-arising (0)-spacetime equi-valence
dualdark Out/In Breathing-Landscapes 
of BiCameral MindLiberating/BodyConserving Balance,
sacred ecology of birth through regenerate rebirth
of ego/eco-cooperative ZenZero co-investment
EarthTribe life-centric health...

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FIRST GLANCE EMBRACE

  (HER STORY)

                             ...

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PASSION OF CONVENTION

                                ...

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Sings the story at twilight 
When the moon is just rising, 
Sings a simple troubadour 
The short tale of life. 

How a fine boy, 
Born in a palace, 
A palace like crystal, 
Became a proud...

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Date:  August 10   2051

At the time Dolly Molly and Holly arrived at the restaurant most of the Hakims were there enjoying jazz melodies some relatives were on the second level l. Mama...

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When I was a FreshPerson in a new higher school,
our English Literature class was delighted
to meet a new to our area Ms. Liska,
who was a beautiful teacher
both outside
and in,
and so we all loved her,
and knew...

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Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...

Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in...

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Dear National Science Foundation--Economics Department:

So,
here's what I want to learn,
or research,
if you will.

Why do we have a Financial Sector,
Business and Industry Sector,
Religious Sector,
Education Sector,
Health Care Sector, 
Food and Nutrition Sector,
Services Industry Sector,
and a Political Sector,
an...

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Pay heed to those deeds from whence the heart must confess...
You're far from Rome Proconsul Caesar...
As they say, "All roads lead to Rome" Ariovistus
and all tresspasses are treated as threats of war...
My recent conquest of...

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In my chambers where phantasmagoria undulate
    not as vigilant watchers but as mnemonic parasites
    I ruminate—
        no longer a singular entity but...

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Perfect love is perfection,
it is rare,
if such love exists at all
it must thrive beyond boundaries of my own experience
either receiving,
or giving.

Could this perfection of synergetic harmony and confluence
we have grown to love as love itself
become...

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Let your skeletons out of the closet and let them dance with mine, the way that our bodies once moved together in an unspoken of time
I am one of these skeletons, maybe your biggest one...

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We are human being with a soul
We were taken from the North and South Pole
And left in a basket at the flagpole
If all the relics in history were unfold
You would discover that the real threshold
Is...

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He sung all the day, all the night of the fourth,
Endlessly, relentlessly, angrily and passionately
Deafening my ears in the wet sugar of his words
In an eternity of hours,
Slowly and dopily, darkness billowed away
Sifting along to...

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During the days before the 
Vacation began FIRST: there
was a thunderous knock on
The door of Damian Hakim's 
Residence. Damian Junior ran
To answer the door.  But
Damian was disturbed in his
den by the omenous knock.
Damian asked...

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Voices of creation speak Type A and Type B,
and polyglot dialects through Z, 
somehow under what lies in shadow
from B through Z

Anyway, Type A conscious I am alive
in this indoor moment
awake but not directly sun-absorbing...

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This is my translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's second elegy from his Duino Elegies, which he began composing at Duino Castle in 1912. 

Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Every angel...

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We learn our right from wrongs,
and maybe right from lefts,
as we go along.

Issues come up within developmental windows,
like stealing
emerges from touching your older brother's stuff
and beginning to more wisely discern
what's mine from what's yours,
because when...

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The Demon’s Shrill Cry of Dread and Horror

This tale of “The Demon’s Shrill Cry of Dread and Horror”
lives on in the mountain village of Gpeth Tor in the outlying 
region of the “Dark Forbidden Forest”...

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