Long Treatises Poems

Various Heresies 3

Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now...

Read More

Various Heresies 6

Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield...

Read More

K373 and K374 of the THIRUKKURAL: Translated with Commentary

The poet's name, THIRUVALLUVAR [Thiru = Sacred and Valluvar = the name of the priesthood caste of the « Pariah » (whom Mahatma Gandhi prefered to call...

Read More

Yuletide pageants vis a vis merry go round revisited

healthy progeny regaled being alive
analogous to children ecstatic twenty-five
on December exhaling joie de vivre at dive 
in into neat stack of wrapped gifts, when...
what! out of thin...

Read More

Zero.
By which nothing is divided.
No zero
no negative
no opposite
no hope
no Adam, no apple, no marriage, no morning.
No mirror
no knowledge
no God, no soul, no ear lobe, no Iliad, no Odyssey.
No universe
no black hole
no zodiac
no hero
no mission, no...

Read More

Yuletide pageant merry go round

Panoply of mystical elements of holly day style 
breathe prez sense frostily exhaled aired
per millennia athwart 
(this terrestrial spaceship planet Earth)
two plus seventeen carousel rides resonated
veritable pantheon of pagan rituals 
and...

Read More

And shake off the mantric spells ringing in your conditioned minds
            but remember and preserve the great sanskrit treatises
     ...

Read More

Arriving from unknown somewhere
He set up clinic in the market square
Declared he could cure any disease
Using herbal drugs of plants and trees
Townsfolk being credulous
Soon to his shop began to rush
Diabetics, rheumatics, asthmatics flooded
None over his...

Read More

tender petsmart impact, where world wide web populated 
with sacrificial pacification sans deity 
via oblation, immolation, flagellation appeasing Dominatrix
borrow wing, vis a vis amalgamated viz Roman sol invictus
wrought fiery brimstone tempting those who dared
assert contrary...

Read More

Only A Poet Would Understand
Only A Writer Will Know…
Why I Would Feel This Disheartened and
Why I Can’t Shake Writer’s Woe… 

… I Lost 200 Poems or More
Tho’ The Exact Count Doesn’t Matter
Most of What I’d...

Read More

Round about nineteen 1971-2, yours truly bid adieu 
to Henry Kline Boyer Elementary School 
   (situated at crossroads – then beau
colic rural routes of Evansburg Road and Ridge Pike), where nary a clue
prevails...

Read More

This generic creek king mortal mwm 
   (who generally river ears the bay sea gully feels ire ate 
asper propensity plundering positive human qualities 
   tested to the max), bait
ting virtue...

Read More

such heretics pitched headlong 
into fiendish frothing furnace
forcing obeisance toward primitive popular 
identified, honored, glorified father figure
expressing devotion re: 
decking the halls of the mountain king,

whence boughs of Juniper sprigs contriving wreaths
sanctifying twisted brambles via...

Read More

Man has mused over life’s origin for ages.
The thoughts and treatises of the sages,
filling tall tomes tallying thousands of pages,
tell of evolution in stages over millions of ages.

Life, some say was sparked by lightning arcs.
Amino...

Read More

"Death comes equally to us all, it's true,
No matter who we are or what we pursue.
It doesn't heed our wealth or our fame,
Taking us all the same, without a name.

Before death, we may hold power...

Read More

No man knows the exact day or hour
But charlatans continually preach of an Armageddon stour
Over fallow fields they their abrasive treatises scour
Softening the hard, unyielding ground as a tidy, careful plower
With visions of doomsday they fertile...

Read More

Far away on distant horizons, lies the world that we want to see,
It is true that we are blessed, but do you think we are truly free?
Those who have fought and died, would certainly hope...

Read More