Long Undisturbed Poems

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
-Michael R. Burch

*

Willy Nilly
Michael R. Burch

Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, Willy...

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Willy Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

for the Demiurge aka Yahweh and Jehovah 

Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, Willy Nilly?
 
Isn’t it...

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Poems about Poems (II)

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss?
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves...

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The Making of a Poet
by Michael R. Burch

While I don’t consider “Poetry” to be my best poem—I wrote the first version in my teens—it’s a poem that holds special meaning for me; I call it...

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No Mark
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes, 
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before...

here where you have...

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The State of the Art (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Has rhyme lost all its reason
and rhythm, renascence?
Are sonnets out of season
and poems but poor pretense?

Are poets lacking fire,
their words too trite and forced?
What happened to desire?
Has...

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For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight...

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Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve...

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Sonnets XVII-XXIV

Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten...

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MODERN SONNETS I

I prefer the original definition of the sonnet as a “little song” of indeterminate form and length. These modern sonnets vary from more-or-less traditional to free verse.


Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem...

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genius?
sometimes you are in its minimal spotted light...sometimes!
other times you just know you've been touched and you freeze,
moved but frozen...like a stranger it moves in, does its work and leaves.

...maybe it's been a while since...

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Reducing sauces is a clever act that is not predetermined

Swimming in tepid waters often relieves tensions but a moose with a migraine prefers an ice cold bath. Bathing rituals signify statuses and this is referred...

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Nine times a fish tail is spun from thin yarn?

Swimming in tepid waters often relieves tensions but a moose with a migraine prefers an ice cold bath. Bathing rituals signify statuses and this is referred...

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In the silky night, dotted with mystery,
Where the moon's thread weaves shadows on the paths,
The heart, a thin garment, a flash in the ether,
Listens as the time from the hourglass seeps away,
And its rhythm, a...

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#1
"It is a sin to kill a Mockingbird.
While playing games with rocks or guns, defray,
them, please, ...shoot old tin cans.  Each whispered song 
from Mockingbirds, can heal the wounds  of the day"

Virtues are...

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Date:  April  2051
 
7 am the call resounded throughout 
Every Hakim Household. They had it
Blaring out onto the estate's public
Address system. "DJ heard it in 
His house clearly he was visibly 
Irritated. ...

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Herpetologist meets actress (Cameron Diaz).
If he's funny he's me.
South America or Africa (on location).
In a diamond mind.
The protagonists (lovers), the diamonds, the miners and the minders.
By minders we mean watchers, organizers, supervisors.
As all art must:...

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The sun, resplendent in its blazing might,
Burns fiercely o'er a barren, lifeless waste,
A desert dry and vast where earth is scorched
By searing radiation, deathly bright.
No sign of life but one lone phoenix flies,
Soaring precarious, close...

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VIII

In the minds fixed eye I see five newly discovered graves,              
Headless lions sat atop an impregnable "Triumphal Gate";   ...

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My internal experience of depression
today shames
external ecology of elation,
all I might know as warm extended family
of profoundly peaceful impressions
still bare surviving
at end of this slow-fading thread.

This morning
one Epictetus sentence
speaks of blaming left-hemisphere dominant GodVoices:

"People are...

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Dr. Sue Johnson,
developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy,
rooted in an Attachment Theory
that organic creatures live healthier
more robust
compassionate
and prosperous lives
when their original womb relationship
and earliest parent/child interdependence
is more warmly attached
and less coldly detached,
and certainly not absent,
stolen for...

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1.

WHAT?

Are we going to enter the ill-fated whirlpool 
                          ...

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Don’t Just Murmur


1.

WHAT?

Are we going to enter the ill-fated whirlpool 
                        ...

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In borrowed plumes
a masquerade we stage.
Thoughts echo doctrines 
passions are preordained.
From broken families 
where fractured spirits weep
Mothers of soulful sorrow 
With eyes that never sleep.

We inherit canvases 
pre-primed with societal skews.
But the brush trembles in...

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Made in Neonazia

Life wrote you and I this poem on a sunny day of watching
penguin’s colonies bathing on the beaches near Cape Town 
A splendid display of harmony of sun ocean and tourist attraction
warm sand...

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