Long Ungentle Poems

Juvenilia: Early Poems V

Poetry
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;
with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,
I found you—shivering, bare.

They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both...

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Poems about Poems III

Radiance
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

The poet delves earth’s detritus?hard toil?
for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet;
each syllable his pen excretes?dense soil,
dark images impacted, rooted clay.

The poet sees the sea but...

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An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”)
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

As wroten bie the goode Prieste
Thomas Rowley 1464

In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen,
Then hot upon the meadows...

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These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

I

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber
of these ancient halls.

I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time, alone,
not...

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TO PENETRATE MY FATE

The light cannot possibly penetrate…..
Not through a curtain of horrid hate
While warring  warriors die in vain
And God knows I can’t stand their pain

The light cannot fit through a crack in the...

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I truly believe that I was only created, just to feel nothing but heartache darkness and gut wrenching unbearable pain and sadness only to be ing destroyed!!!!!!!!
I am an unbearable chaotic ing mess of dark...

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AT LAST

On my veranda I watch beads of sweat 
slide down the glass of ale I use to get over 
something I’m not sure of, perhaps just an 
absence of idea or thought, a quiet...

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On Saturday the fifth, I will meet my bride.
By side of alter, and then decide.
If I should flee, or marry thee. 
You may think me cruel, or ungentle of man.
But she’s the type, to toll...

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Come hither, come thither, come nigh
   Don't dither, don't blither, don't sigh
 
Ask me how, ask me where, ask me why
   Come hither, come thither, come nigh
 
Dance airily, dance merrily,...

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Bubble
by Michael R. Burch

                Love—
          fragile,    elusive—
 ...

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We spent the night—
once, in non-verbal talks, from rhythmic 
folk steps in duple time 
to a wild swaying. To enjoy life, 

be totally free. A lover, friends 
and me. Yes, me. I was there, to...

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Your Place in My Thoughts

I so forcibly suppress my thoughts of you.
Your entity lingers like the putrid scent of sulfur in my soul. 
The havoc created leaving me shattered and blue.
I had given up so...

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In the light she died,
although it was I that faded to blindness.
The Beloved
ransacked me, She was ungentle.
Years past, empty nights, grey hours
in the harsh light of anger.
I held my grudge against Her
like a hot iron.
Then...

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The ungentle wind
breezes in through the window,
cooling an afternoon lust
that was widely soaked
in a summer haze, blending
with the sweet aroma of
a great Africa,
whose erotic craving was
painted in her big, round eyes;
only unearthed by
the master’s naked...

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