Long Trackless Poems

Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis, high bred poiet?s of mine

     ("Thus always I cause the death of tyrants.”)
the purported line Brutus uttered 
after assassinating Julius Caesar.

     Alternatively...

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Booth made famous on April 15th, MDCCCLXV... 
Sic semper tyrannis ad mortem
("Thus always I bring death to tyrants").

Ever since early forerunners 
of twenty first century
mankind (sprinted 
across trackless expanse extant
upon planet Earth), 
modern Homo Sapiens...

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UndefeaTed.  A Boxing Lesson.

A friend, off the Vineyard,
wrighted a ship.
And, perhaps himself,
and certainly the worlds ‘round him.
His words were fashioned, shipshape and watertight
as were the splines and bungholes and rudder pins and
All the Things...

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Bartender Oh Bartender
(a stout rendition of O Captain! My Captain!
Perfect rhythmic rhyme with tonic 
when the doth ale).

Mine eyes espy the glory per the ending 
of another work day beckon Baileys Irish Creme
with Absolut certainty...

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Running fast thru Autumn’s dream, Vincent-bright in village winter’s light
Topaz-treed streets, eaves-filled , singing with saffron and  gold,
A Rocky Mountain cold cornflower sky over English hills
Vivid with Vincent-fuzzy ice-finger edges 
Photo-album best parts of...

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Fukuda Chiyo-ni Haiku

Fukuda Chiyo-ni (1703-1775) was a Japanese poet and painter of the Edo period, also known as Kaga no Chiyo.

Because morning glories
held my well-bucket hostage
I went begging for water!
—Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R....

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DANTE TRANSLATIONS

Little sparks may ignite great Infernos.—Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Beatrice I beheld the outer boundaries of blessedness.—Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She made my veins and even the pulses within...

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The idea of a living constitution
has the same forensic indeterminacy
as a committed dream.

I am content to trust this dream to the end
to have it fill my cup of hope all day and night.
I am content...

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In Life’s old garden nations lived who all its fruits enjoyed,
While others longed in vain, while some the winter blasts destroyed;
Its trees are legion; some decay, While others flush with bloom,
And thousands still their birth...

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Some green; some grayish; some dark or brownish,
Grass-filled; grass-less; some portions clam clownish;
Ups-downs; zigzags; clumpy, ghastly, scary,
Beasts-like fringes clinging to dark aerie...

Herbs, shrubs, trees, climbers, creepers... in kinship,
Growing, like horses uncontrolled by whip;
Thorns, amidst wild...

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Moses was set adrift on the Nile in bulrushes,
The freedom fighter had encounters with God,
And trembled at the sight of the burning bushes 
Mountains quake, earth trembles, heaven is a flood.
 
With rain, thunder peals,...

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( An old poem, slightly modified)

How I wish my poems could,
soar higher and higher
like a bird of limitless wingspan,
dashing into horizons far!
But they skim like web footed water birds,
tilting their wings in vain,
unable to fly...

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Species did die ere man,
In the round of selection,
So many and so long.
What difference now
Should they go?

In trackless time
Lent to adaptation,
A peice succeeds
To its proper slot,
Only displacing
By adjusted gene.
Extinction wrought by man
Plays at no game,
But...

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The Many Ways God Speaks To Us

There are many ways God’s seeking
To make Himself known.
But is man listening and looking
To understand Nature’s revealing crown.
It talks to our human senses
Every waking moment of the day.
And in...

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HARRY WEST 

The Kadaitchi (Witch Doctor) Knight

Harry stood alone and sniffed the breeze
a pongy hay smell,  Japanese
Harry sheltered there beneath a tree
a gum tree dripping sap

The  Black Knight shed his lap lap
joined the...

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The Last Sacrifice



It plays a piano Grande 
Spiraling
Tones twist soft twistings relentless 
Chimes fluent rolling scarlet scales
Tinkling sacred chorales
From cherubim fingers
Plucked petaled folden harps

Of the ballerina swans mute vocals
I know to her return
I succumb
To the...

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The Spirit Of The Lake
                              ...

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LOST   AND   FOUND

Our craft are but                         ...

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Dougal Cameron 1900s
by Don Johnson
Brisbane..Australia.

Old Dougal Cameron was the man, 
the cruel red desert country crossed. 
Drove cattle cross the trackless plains, 
out where Burke and Wills were lost. 
He'd travel o'er a hundred mile...

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Milton Brown

1822 – 1917

I knew C. W. Harvey.
Knew him and liked him.
I lived on the first floor of his Greenleaf Hotel
By Bailey Street.
Lived and thrived on the flowered verandah.
Sipped lemonade and gummed soft bread
In the...

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Hold and veer revolved career, the way by man alone on trails unknown, across
trackless stone, to follow where? across prairie’s bare! traveling light with bellies 
tight, on rocky shores its lore was sure, to follow,...

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A formidable land stretches endlessly into space -
   no borders, no canopies over it
   nowhere to hide.

Trackless wilderness, strange, unfriendly terrain -
   I crawl over broken glass just to...

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As They Danced Incognito 

From where I sat that night in 1971,
I could see in the distance south LA,
Lit up like grounded stars in black mud;
As a rude wind brushed up against me,
I saw you...

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Upon the dusty shores I watched 
the calming waves of sea debauched. 
They seem to whisper in my ear 
then motioned me to venture near. 

Now had I known to swim not sink 
I could...

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It's always intangibles that draw me, sleepily

into another trackless landscape 

reaching from my mind, out to a dry horizon

that obscures each fleeing fragment

of that sense of home that I have cherished.

Its silence is the magnet....

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