Long Unnumbered Poems

Sappho fragment #155
translation by Michael R. Burch 

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

*

Sappho fragment #156
translation by Michael R. Burch 

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable...

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“Forever”



When The Terrors came,
The Uncontrollable Ones,
she closed her eyes
and listened for the notes
her mother had planted
amongst the deep blues,
beds of Forget-Me-Nots,
she followed the 
labyrinthine trail 
and through a gate unhinged,
it would seem destroyed, thrown aside,
she...

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"Slow Gin and Astral Conversations"



A maze me?

I’m the architect 
of my own destiny
he beguiled her 
incessantly 
from the depths of 
his bottled up Carceri
she knew him 
before he became 
a complex 
well-hidden 
Piranesi
twixt your world
and...

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"Murdering Pluto" 

On Pluto, 
they deal with trauma
in the best possible way,
they murder it slowly 
in poetic hell 
day after day.

the dark Seraphim
have their way. 
their ways are stellar.
some say they hover
in the stratosphere,
but that's...

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SS SULTANA

Boiler, or bomb, the Sultana sank on April 27, eighteen sixty five 
Taking down with her, a good rounded off number of 1,800 lives

Carrying Union soldiers, who were ex-prisoners of war, up north
From Vicksburg...

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I was a celebrated, professional psychic, offering glimpses of rosy future;
And helping people work through problems, like pink moon, come sooner.

I had learnt to talk with the spirits, and also relate what they were saying,
To...

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Sappho, fragment 58
loose translation by Michael R. Burch 
 
Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.



Sappho, fragment 130 (Lobel-Page 130 / Voigt 130)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.



Sappho, unnumbered fragment
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What cannot be...

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Odyssey from Africa, Chapter 11 (d) cont...

Thus the boarding of the parties 
Was a speedy operation 
Very soon the whole flotilla
Sailed toward the open ocean

This wide bay from which the ships set
Sail is called the...

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Unnumbered human corpses
mutilated and spread
like illegally-shot elephants in Waza Park!
From ‘man know thyself’
to ‘man hates himself’-
humans mutilate humans!

Future-bound glorious infants,
feeble moms
and luck-abandoned dads
bombed, suffocated, shot and slain
by politico-economic drunks!
Yawning stomachs here,
blood-dripping arms there,
open-mouth frozen heads...

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Do you care to be a winner?
Would you fight on like a warrior?
Even when the chances get thinner?
Would you be strong like the superior?
Do you only wish to cross every border?
And so always input much...

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Orwellian over the horizon                               ...

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Granny hit you with it you fly across the room
she was a 5th generation hep cat 
a finger popping bebopster with double elbows
you can have your two bit Buddha garden
and your silly Jesus candles
Granny created...

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What are mental aberrations when in a deep state of meditation by focusing on rejecting all thoughts and senses, and allowing the body to exist autonomously?

To call them visions is to purely describe the minimalistic...

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Infinity beckons taunting  
Beyond the mortal ridge
For time enough to really live
Those longings yet to bridge

I wear your symbol 
Pierced in diamonds sharp
On my ears that I may always
Remember to hear you with my...

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For I am death, the personification of pure evil,
The grand godfather, of legions of unnumbered generations.
Behold thy disciples, baptized beneath my crimson waters,
Of blood.
Then reanimated as the living undead, in mine own image,
These are my...

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sometimes Im not myself
im someone else for a day
where tears flow easily
and anger makes its mark
relationships are hurt
hardships unnumbered
dangeroulsy hanging over my head
by a thin, breaking string

sometimes the string breaks 
lands on me in a...

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One day while wandering with a friend
Down country road to river’s bend,
A wooden bridge o’er country mile,
Alone, we sat there for a while.

‘Twas in our youth this late September
Two souls took rest above a river,
Where...

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And if by love they should be saved
lift them by angels
in innocence to a horizons trumpet

They who have fallen unnumbered
to the hate of bullets
and the factions of brush aside politics

And then by flag those nations...

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I remember you, O Dinosaur-of-a-kind.
I remember you clearly.
On that fine, fine day;
That day of all our days, unnumbered in the multitude of your days, and lost in the melee of mine;
And through a kind of...

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What's my point?
I often ask
too seldom
Where's my circle?

Good days are right
as bad feel wrong dark night

And what's our peak communication point?
Where were we when I last remembered? 
you Here
me Now
positively co-invested relationship
bilaterally unnumbered

Light shines in...

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THE SURGE

You came like as expected
Winds furiously shaking the ground
Rain unstoppable continuous to pound.

As hours passed, your fierce marks the town
water increases up to its heights but still
you never stop swiping every corner, left nothing...

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Conflicts have raged upon the disputed soils of earth since before men began to record them.  But there have been other conflicts less recorded, less lauded, but more redoubtable, oh, so much more. ...

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Songs unsung will disappear, 

as breathless as a stone, the fear 

of Armageddon fills the air 

and gathers strength against the prayer 

that withers, fizzles into naught, 

despite the lessons we were taught, 

to love...

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FOR THE UNSUNG MAIMED AND DEAD—2015 

On the ragged edge of brittle time, the paddle of life
Plays ping pong minuets of war and peace.
Yesterdays’ enemies have now become today’s allies;
And old war buddies are now...

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...inspired by 'Reveille' by Joseph Brodsky


Songs unsung will disappear,
as breathless as a stone, the fear
of Armageddon fills the air
and gathers strength against the prayer

that withers, fizzles into nought,
despite the lessons we were taught
to love our...

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