Long Unanchored Poems

Instruction
by Michael R. Burch

Toss this poem aside
to the filigreed and the wild tide
of sunset.

Strike my name,
and still it is all the same.
The onset

of night is in the despairing skies;
each hut shuts its bright bewildered eyes.
The...

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Doggerel II: Doggerel about Doggerel, or, More Nonsense Verse

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood:
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the...

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Love murmurs in my ear that to be hunted
is infinitely more enviable than to be the hunter.
                  ...

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Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad)
by Michael R. Burch

He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in...

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 Part 2
4th Delirium: Lost Souls
Sunken cities , pilgrims peering.. gawking,
squinting eyeballs, blazing sun
Janus facing, shepherds chasing.. stalking,
friends embrace before they shun
Tearooms steaming, tumult teeming.. talking,
lovers listen, poets pun
Broken stones unanchored, quaking.. rocking,
slipping, falling, one...

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Happily Never After: the Second Curse of the Horny Toad
by Michael R. Burch
 
He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled...

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To reach nirvana
Poet paradise
You have to reach the third level

It's a journey to forever
It may take some their whole lifetime,
and others may never get there

It's a quantum leap
fraught with uncertainty
First it takes writing skill,
then an...

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Just when we chase after our dreams, a strange guest emerged 
lurking behind the shadows of yesterday,
as it travels through borders everyone wish it would remain a foreign disease.
Soldiers sent out to fight this unseen...

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My mother was beautiful when I was young.
In pictures she wore pearls.
I remember her putting on sky-blue eye shadow,
Even her eyebrows beautiful,
like the Arc de Triumphe.
And her ruby brooches,
And her stain glass blouses, rhinestones glinting...

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Falling into the vortex,
there is no escape
You're sucked in,
getting sub-atomically stripped
is your inevitable fate
No more straight line of linear time
No more clearly defined dimensions of reality,
it all bends and shifts
Space-time gets blended
and folded,
unanchored and set...

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Submerged in the flood of the maddening crowd,
I see a verdant valley carved out by covert ingenuity
within my lonesome mind, drifting away entranced,
displaced from the still stratum of suffusing sound 
of converging cacophony, resonating loud...

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Floating in the flash flood 
of divesting dissonance pervasive, 
I see a verdant valley carved out 
within the entity of lonesome me, 
drifting away with the desolate sigh, 
displaced from the stratum of sound 
of...

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In shadows cast by memories' sway,
I pen this note where demons play,

To you, my love, who stood so tall,
I reach across the chasm's call.

Forgive me for the storms I brewed,
For words like knives, harsh and...

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Floating
by Michael R. Burch
 
Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.
 
Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.
 
Memories of ghostly...

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Keep the money,
if you keep your mouth shut
Feel free to speak openly on all things,
as long as the sealed information stays put
Let your bank account numbers go up,
as certain liberty restrictions get placed on lockdown
You...

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"Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, 
after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, 
something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry."
 ...

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A few pages of unanchored memories, 
                             ...

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Submerged in the flood of maddening crowd,
I see a verdant valley carved out 
within the lonesome me drifting away,
displaced from the still stratum of sound 
of converging cacophony loud,
I dream attached to the unanchored mind....

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"Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, 
after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, 
something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry."
 ...

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"Not all who wander are lost "

                        Quote by  _J.R.R. Tolkien...

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I'd rather sail the sky
Than a stormy sea
Or ride on a rainbow
Not some bumpy, blue thing.
I could climb a cloud
Or move moonbeams

But I'd rather blaze the blunt
I'm toking on with you
I'm the blunt blazer
Stoking one...

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I plopped down in my usual spot
and pressed the button that brings that thing to life
that thing that has pride of place in our lounge
in front of which we sit for hours
paying it our undivided...

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The child allowed to have their way,
And do whatsoever they may,
Who is not taught to have restraint,
Develops traits that their life taint.

The rule of appetite destroys,
And undermines life’s lasting joys.
It makes the human being a...

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Disconnected
In a world woven with wires,
I stand still,
a stranger in the hum of voices,
the glow of screens reflecting
a pale loneliness against my skin.

Friendships flicker like dying flames,
texts sent into the void,
echoes of laughter lost
in the...

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In a world woven with wires,
I stand still,
a stranger in the hum of voices,
the glow of screens reflecting
a pale loneliness against my skin.

Friendships flicker like dying flames,
texts sent into the void,
echoes of laughter lost
in the...

Read More