Long Unfortunate Poems

Where art thou anonymous benefactor...to offer me succor?

Ah... methinks legal tender 
could be a boon to help me bolster 
mein kampf with necessary material equipage,
which prospect to acquire essential 
commodities sabotaged 
at the altar of...

Read More

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...

Read More

You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
 
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened...
 
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching...
 
You...

Read More

I was skeptically listening 
to a retiring social researcher,
and problem-solving imaginer,
from the American Enterprise Institute;

An Institute
I usually find more destitute
of bicameral consciousness than not,
and thereby with less healthy resonant imagination
than more pathological dissonance.

But, I found...

Read More

I have a hardbound copy of
"The City of Hartford 1784-1984"
although most of this coffee table story
of unfortunate events
takes place between 1850 and 1950s,
before and after the UnCivil War,
and,
like the U.S. Catholic Church
and many MainLine Protestant...

Read More

Medieval Poems



Deor's Lament (Anglo Saxon poem, circa 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland knew the agony of exile.
That indomitable smith was wracked by grief.
He endured countless troubles:
sorrows were his only companions
in his frozen...

Read More

The probe alerts for federal 
employees identification machines
data including finger printing 
system use for fraudulent 
access to aviation government 
buildings documents and data 
to allow domestic terrorists access
identication machines still not 
located be vigil when...

Read More

Conditions were harsh out in Kansas,
For the children and Sarah and Paul.
Neighbors and friends packed up and were gone;
Headed west they could hear fortune's call.
Never sure year to year of the harvest,
So their talents were...

Read More

Veronica Franco translations

Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was a Venetian courtesan who wrote literary-quality poetry and prose.

Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (I) 
by Veronica Franco
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

"I resolved to make a virtue of...

Read More

I wrote a sad but true urban legend called “Dillen and the DMV” last week.
Here follows an update.

Background Review:

One of my health care employees, Dillen, has wicked ADD, borderline intelligence, not qualifying for disability supports,...

Read More

Today is assiduously
religiously different,
as I review our local RiverEast News.

Every week
Mike Thompson writes a solid Editorial
in a compelling voice.
I expect to only add
my hearty sacred
happy secular "Amen!"

Our nearly fearless Editor and Chief
calls for political "ACCOUNTABILITY!"
like...

Read More

Sharing my translation of a famous poem (Sadharan Meye) written by Rabindranath Tagore, who won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. It's one of his story-like poems, written in Bengali, which is one of the...

Read More

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (c. 1460-1530)
loose translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

after William Dunbar

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that...

Read More

Wounded Sacred Dementia

My last foster care-provider
and -receiver story
is also a sad story
of my last special needs adoption
of bipolar born,
and oppositionally reared,
alcoholism.

My BiPolar Wounded Child
turned an auspicious five
on the day I first saw her,
and promptly rejected...

Read More

Goodness, I nearly lost my balance on the spiral seashells and broken sea stone chipping matrix.
My quaint obsession with marine life and that skyline paradox blossoming so tantalisingly,  might be a source of some...

Read More

It interests me to peer past the drafting
and rewriting shoulder
of Thomas Jefferson,
unhappy slave-owner,
and John Adams,
with domestic slave-owner nuisance issues,
and other principle writing minds 
of original democratic declaration and constitution shaping times,
as they listened to their...

Read More

My early 20s Eldest Black Lives Matter Son
wears his disabling ADHD label uncomfortably,
impatiently,
like a possibly self-redeeming crown
but with unfortunate MessiahComplex thorns
as the Great WhiteMan's sacrificial lamb.

His First, and hopefully last, Girl
is an ADHD Latina,
with sparkling...

Read More

Perhaps infertile
incomplete
unwashed memories
of elder v younger,
Goliath v David,
crusades v communion
critical, yet part of chronic, events
speak extended family disengagement truth
to powerful dirty laundry engagement failures.

That disclaimer said,
I have two incomplete conversations
in mind and heart
and what I...

Read More

For my handler’s special agent Leroy Heimbach special agent Kevin Dreary special agent Paula Brand special agent Alan King how I became a causality of wearing wires pregnant buying weapons and drugs for the justice...

Read More

Where do we think all this economic and politically empowering
cooperative
nutritional
organically luscious imagination
and ecologically exegetical orthopraxis
started?

George Lakoff speaks of strictly straight stern paternalistic God the Universalist Fathers,
vertically Winning over an otherwise Loser, yet highly competitive, ecopolitical...

Read More

Shalom, Aloha, Namaste

Healthy identity is rooted in wealthy socioeconomic trust,
beginning in utero
swimming about in embryonic nutrition,
rather than active distrust
or more passive mistrust of the unknown
yet frightening alien, aggressive Other.

Psychological fuel for polypathic political trust
is safe...

Read More

Dear John,

All day
yesterday
I loaded up with a cascading river
of mixed anxiety and anticipation
about what to safely and kindly,
transparently and vulnerably
compassionately, so non-violently, share,
what to communicate;

Which narrative tributaries to choose
within this vast spacetime stream
of choices
directions
felt depressions...

Read More

My thought for this day,
although still early,
is respect for hope.

Respect for our interdependence
and respect for our challenging differences,
important, yet hopefully not as powerful
as our interdependent love for healthy life.

Yesterday
I noticed a brown cardboard box
in the...

Read More

How one twenty first century married mortal male (me - Matthew Scott Harris)...
found himself bewitched about Circe,
particularly after reading book title by the same name.

An enchantress and a minor goddess
in ancient Greek mythology and religion
depicted...

Read More

Thirty years ago, long before ISIS started executing Kurds, Muslims and Christians, I hired a Pakistani Muslim as an art director in Chicago. I was an Irish Catholic editor putting out a small national magazine....

Read More