Long Twitched Poems

Where Does the Butterfly Go?
by Michael R. Burch

for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
Where...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems IX

These are early poems of mine, written in my teens as a high school student and during my first two years of college.

Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of...

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It’s with great difficulty I put my pen on this paper.
Struggling as to when and what to begin with.
Learning that life has its way of collapsing 
Our paths down to one: unchangeable, inescapable.
 
A journey...

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THE NOCTURNAL DELIGHT OF MEPHISTOPHELES - PART TWO (CONTINUED):

The stage was now set . . . from nowhere, Mephisto handed me a missive in 
Medieval Latin to read. He said, “Young poet, the hour is...

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Harold the Hugh Hefner wannabe carrot top...

spry buck analogous to energizing bunny 
jump/kickstarted procreation ruckus.

Home on the range 
cacophony quite absurd
PlayBoy Bunny herd
and felt ingratiatingly inured,
nevertheless colony or nest 
of doe eyed demoiselles 
stewed over...

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Somewhere beyond the deep young girls are crying out in their sleep. 
Cries that span beyond decades wounding the hearts of weeping mothers 
And breaking the souls of desperate fathers. 

I can hear those cries...

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How often the old dog had heard that said, at the end of a good walk?  ‘ OK we’ve had fun now it’s time to go back home and get some work done’ ,...

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Harold the Hugh Hefner carrot top buck

Ruled his hare'm 
nsync with trumpeting Donald Duck,
(loud enough to arouse Daisy),
the former cartoon character,
a pensive searing black kind Roebuck
heir to a fortune hauling trash and rubbish,

whereby dust bunnies...

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Chapter 199
When I held the mirror up to my face
I saw beauty.
Not the kind that could start wars,
But the kind that could end them.
"I'm beautiful," I repeat until the words don't sound foreign to me.
A...

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On July 15, 2010, my wife, Teri, and I took our younger daughter, Isabel, to the doctor for a regular checkup. She was nine months old and appeared to be in perfect health. Her first...

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The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.

I made myself breakfast in bed. I added salt and pepper to my eggs and used my toast for a cheese and bacon sandwich. I squeezed a...

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Twas the night before sunrise
and all through the warehouse,
not a creature was stirring
except Elmer, the field mouse.

It was 1962
And times were hard on mice.
Elmer had eaten this month
only twice.

Away to the bin
he scurried like a...

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The train station was mostly empty.
The wooden bench was hard and uncomfortable;
I had no place else to sleep.
A rolled up newspaper was the best pillow I could find.

An old, worn out lady and her teenage...

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In an irrevocable warp speed instant, 
my head collided into the likeness of drying tar, 
absorbing each horrid layer of concrete. 
That pitch-black, tacky substance covered my body, 
so that I was trapped, sightless, into...

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Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate was a very evil man,
He used to eat his dinner from a filthy frying pan,
And when he’s finished eating he’d play “catch me if you can”
With his desperado first-mate known as...

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On a stone wall, by the solitary pavement,
Annoyed and angry, with daggers drawn at everyone,
I saw my neighbor sitting dejected and depressed.
Though known him for years, of late he has changed much.

His eyes had grown...

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A Man

Now that im older I catch myself reflecting on the things I do, my father use to do when he’s stressing; once he bit his lip and his eyes twitched,then you were in shit,...

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OBSCURITY
I watched myself crash into the mud,
Through the obscurity I could see traces of who I was.
The reflection of the innocent punctual me,
Staring pathetically as my demons devoured me.
Those guilty eyes still craves for beautiful...

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A blinding light shot down from an opening in the cloudy sky
  From the gap, the heavens birthed a winged humanoid unlike any, 
    Which floated down to face the primates....

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I once had a rabbit named Hopper. 
My father had bought him for me on my birthday. 
He was small and all white except for little black spots
on his back. He was a happy little...

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Spring, the mischievous libertine,
Has twitched from the chrysalis of dull realities,
Sneaking, slyly, among norms and tasteless thoughts,
A live torch in the old auditoriums where science quivers with emotion.
With the gesture of a diva, she shatters...

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In lightless pit of silent vale 
Treading softly on broken shale
No noise I plead, no noise I beg
Lest I wake the beast with in my head

A shadow that slides from place to place
A ghostly shade...

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"Snapdragons and Dandy Lions - Part 2"


The day was cooling down 
pressing itself close into
the amythest and musk pink early eve
as the eggshell pale blue sky rolled over into 
Astor Purple to get ready for...

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Sexism
Growing up we’ve  always thought people were born with a disgusted look on their faces
Because that’s how they have always looked at us
Boxes
 check 1 check other
People don’t know we hid between people like...

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The meadow lay dark, dank, hushed, cold and clammy.
Nothing dared to move, 
to break the soliloquent solitude.
Time stood still, adjourned, awaiting a warp to lift the lag.
Then, the moon peeped out from the edge of...

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