Long Unfolded Poems

Rejection Slips 2

The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch
 
The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,
 
the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,

the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,
 
the face in the...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VII

These are early poems I wrote as a boy and as a teenager.

The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men...

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"A word like a river flows through the mind"                          ...

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WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

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The next event to be held for Joulupukki was the coronation, which followed closely behind his parent's burial.  He was very wary of what he would say at this event. Virtually every elf on...

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I was raised in one of those white nationalist churches,
passing itself off as a Christian evangelical Bible church,
where "evangelical" meant fundamental
and "fundamental" meant we did not interpret scripture
but accepted it as God's literal trans-historical Word
of...

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Walking down the alley behind the buildings on Royal street the Mandevilla and Jasmine vines line the sidewalk calming my stressed nerves.  The sweet fragrance of the flowers intoxicating my senses.  My luggage...

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At first, it wasn't my father's Oldsmobile.
Then, there came a longing for a new identity
with an invasion of one morphing after another.
Next thing I knew, there was 'no' Oldsmobile.
It seems that so many things started...

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It is getting to the place where free speech is no longer free in America.                    ...

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The time was 11:05. Damian 
Made the essential announcement 
"HAKIM the time is now 11:05
We will leave this place at 11:15am.
That's 10 minutes from now.
So use the toilet, do everything 
You need to do for...

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"Angels & Demons"




The Soul never sleeps
battered and lonely, the lesson 
Life spent in The Hard Sell

Soft-served you become
melting Insomnia 
mouth sucking a loaded gun

blue ribbonned and veined
pulsing electricity 
from heart to lung to brain

you’re a...

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"Energy fields extend to infinity.
Consequently they are open--
not a little bit open,
not sometimes open,
but continuously open.
The long-established view of the universe as an entropic,
closed system is rapidly losing ground.
Proposals that living systems were open systems
led...

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I was a very enthusiastic gardener, who loved being surrounded by beauty,
Like the songbirds that visit cherry trees, with a taste for something fruity.

I adored the familiar blooms, but held a fascinated interest in the...

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Are you sitting comfortably, children?
Because it's a long tale.....
Then I shall begin.

Arthur was a Mason, which in case you hadn't known
is a man who sands and chisels, making shapes from out of stone.
From animals to...

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August 13th, 2021 – twenty two years since...

Wicked bad designed day poem originally crafted
then alternately titled for no particular rhyme nor reason: 
courtesy Doctor Donald Dossey  
who coined paraskevidekatriaphobia. 

August thirteenth nineteen hundred and...

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You know sailor man,
You woke the spirit in me
I thought you were drunken and carefree
I could not hope or dream
The whore of the seas must take her place
I was of the lowest cast
The lowest morale
After...

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(alternately titled: courtesy Doctor Donald Dossey  
who coined paraskevidekatriaphobia 

August thirteenth nineteen hundred and ninety nine
forever etched in annals of my personal infamy
as one still sending hair raising shivers down my spine
which following unpleasant...

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Hello, I come to speak of peace,
The kind which saves the mind from deviation.
To give life to dead instincts,
For the lost throne belonging to black men is found.
Let the whole world come to hear this...

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Sat in his chair, the tv still on
He’s not changed the channel for so very long
The message on screen says a shut down’s ensuing
But press any button to carry on viewing

The remote, untouched on the...

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‘Fragments and crumbs of life, all the little pieces’
                          ...

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In the depths of nothingness, my love, a flower sprung from snows,
I dreamed of you as a splendor, an undying fire in the night, an eternal promise of beginning,
An ode in the whiteness that migrates,...

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Written: April 18, 2024 For Unseeking Seeker Contest

Line of inquiry:

“We have been here a thousand times before
Memory erased, each time we begin anew
Of hands held tenderly, we’ve lost the score
Each embrace virgin like fresh morning...

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It was a nasty war.

To call it an UnCivil War
is to avoid an obvious oxymoron
as embarrassing as Military Vitriolic Intelligence
through lack of Anger and Fear Management,
violently over-industrious absence of mutual civility.

We were too optimistic
about democracy's...

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The dilemma of unfolded experience 
Thief of the universal peace
Thunder storm that terrifies the universe
You are the creature that lives invisibly within
The tremendous bug that bugs the planet earth
Uncomfortable but certainly portable to carry
Possibly replaceable...

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I am oh so sorry Gail, for my immature, inconsiderate, 
selfish life style and for all that being these things 
has caused you to suffer through, you who did not 
deserve to have any of...

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