Long Tousled Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems VI



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound...

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Each of the new deer adjusted quickly to the pace of the ones they had been paired with, and the sleigh tracked smooth and true.  The effects of the extra four deer were easily...

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WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

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She stirs first..restless..looking longingly over..senses awakened.
Their feet shuffle slowly under warm covers. The moonlight shines thru the window catching her face. .illuminating it…her tousled hair frames her face.
She looks up, hopefully for his eyes to...

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I am home ...

oh, my heart
      pray, hush its cadence
         for the sacred sake of unsated thirst
   beg its thrums...

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The shepherd stood on the field, frail,
He knew not what to do when and why,
As the wrathful sun did steep down,
The confused chap followed his humble sheep.
Then one man neared and asked his name,
He gasped...

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Humus me? My vegetated chokes ingest!
(jokes all in jest)

Hard to believe, I orange in a lee
started life as barely visible speck!

Just in the course of healthy growing
season, this former minute nearly
microscopic entity developed into
quite pleasing...

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Non labor (relations) day September 1st, 2023 poem

Aye dream of Genie (as a lad din)
Schwenksville, Pennsylvania -
keystone state abbreviated as Pea Yay,
this stupid non huge poem
deployed courtesy scholar
really...a boot nuttin
butta an overrated allay
zee good for...

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In this, the fairest city of romance, and inside the marvelous museum

to which I have made my first pilgrimage as a lover of art,

I stand in contemplation, mesmerized by my first look at an original...

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His face, withered, gaunt
His eyes cloudy, filled with a haunting vacancy
His voice weak , shallow
Seldom spoken these last difficult days

His hair is white and thin
His skin, so delicate and discolored
The strength has left his fragile...

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A single branch, clawed and pecked, fickle and straining,
Lonely Nestling and father, paw and peck at their home
Lonely branch, spasms in the wind
Nestling and father paw and peck, yearn and whimper
These Flightless Birds, on a...

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Earlier today April 4th, 2022,
which supersedes bald faced headlines 
pointing finger and 
Putin blame for Bucha killings
squarely on head & shoulders
of Russian autocrat, née
yours truly lathered 
his hirsute higglety-pigglety 
thinning oily tresses. 

Hark….the herald angels...

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January 24th, 2023 Hair washing heralds huge happening

Hark….the herald angels sing, and twitter 
for mass communication 
mediums stop the presses 
when I, a regular schlemiel 
take shampoo to mine matted mass mop 
(no less than...

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A Polite Warning. The Following poem is somewhat steamy. Not explicit, but explicit in
inference. If this sort of thing offends you, then please be considerate and don’t read
it. Thank you. 

Naked Flamenco

( A sultry summer...

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I turned away and faced the crashing white rapids. My
evergreen hunting dress whipped in the wind with my
copper hair.

I took a deep breath and jumped. I felt the spray
before the crushing force of the furious...

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1

At peace perhaps too much
a fine Spring rain
we seek news from the desert or capitol
of those who have dedicated their lives to losing their lives for us
adventurers, ancient honor, land runners
this campaign a must to...

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[verse]
My crazy sister had roamed homeless for so long.
Once an intellectual, then her brain went wrong.
For hospitals to keep her, she had to be a danger.
A strange logic, but to reality they were a stranger....

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Courtesy handy dandy
palmar hyperhidrosis
impossible mission to defeat
except poe wet tickly
even courtesy drysol.

(Me slippery fingers slither,
slip and slide splashing ala
Jackson Pollock), sans slap
dash experimental, swiftly

tailored and harried writing
style, yes on par with purging,
spewing, venting...unexpurgated,
unexpressed, unexplained... 
words,...

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Urges ushered Est’bel out of her abode –
a cottage cobbled together from cobwebs and clapboard – 
and she scuttled forth,
her nesty hair tousled
by a leaf-laced breeze

In her bony hands she clutched
dregs of a nightmeg broth
in...

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Come Walk With Me

In my mind
tendrils of memories past
insinuate and insert themselves
in the corners
to root out and cast light upon
them
as my hand presses, whiteknuckled
 
Bent into the bitter wind
here, alone
against the cold hard
brick, mortar and...

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well, there you go, sweetheart; 
i have done it at last - 
the unthinkable, the reckless, the bold 
and possibly suicidal thing...
i have gritted my teeth and hurled myself out into the 
void, 
into all...

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(Me slippery fingers slither,
slip and slide splashing ala
Jackson Pollock), sans slap
dash experimental, swiftly

tailored and harried writing
style, yes on par with purging,
spewing, venting...unexpurgated,
unexpressed, unexplained... 
words, which this Engelbert

Humperdinck singer/songwriter,
(whose name inexplicably popped
into the mind of this...

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Conversation with an Angel

I live in an average neighborhood, in Colorado Springs. I like to refer to my street as
the ‘all American street’. Most of the homes in my neighborhood were built between the
1890’s and...

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Not a flag was unfurled,
and no cornet trilled,
as the rain-swollen clouds,
the bleak valley filled.
 
The wind blowing cold
with a chill that pervades
as the caisson's old wheels
creaked through the glades
 
where leafless Live Oaks
their limbs upward...

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Perfection's never something, 
You can capture oh so well. 
But her beauty burned like gazing, 
At the fires that burn in Hell. 

And people they would beg of her, 
"Let me capture you in photograph."...

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