Long Unseemly Poems

Family Poems

Mother's Smile
by Michael R. Burch

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much."

So more than "much, " much more than...

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Poems about Children


The Desk
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

There is a child I used to know
who sat, perhaps, at this same desk
where you sit now, and made a mess
of things sometimes.I wonder how
he learned at all...

He...

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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers II



All Things Galore
by Michael R. Burch

for my grandfathers George Edwin Hurt Sr. and Paul Ray Burch, Sr.

Grandfather,
now in your gray presence
you are

somehow more near

and remind me that,
once, upon a star,
you...

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Dear neighbors,

I realize we have not met,
other than the guy next door
but that doesn't really count
cause that was just to put up a fence between us,
and I have met Marvelously Mad Max,
behind me, on the...

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Back in the height
of our pre-millennial military-industrial
post-revolutionary days
of competing excess...

No, love,
Stick with
Once upon our Sacred Times...

Once upon a time
here in the US of Northern Americas
we used a Reservation Model
to dispose of hopelessly disabled aboriginals,
too RightBrain...

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Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...

Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in...

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Understanding Nature

Part 1: What (I Think) God Wants You to Know!

Some people don’t understand Nature,
Feel death and pain prove there’s no God
Or if there is He is a monster,
His empathy for us a fraud.

They say...

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To Ecological Greens
concerned about tolerating
evangelical 
monotheistic Red intolerance
of unstraight
unwhite
unmale
unhealthy
unsafe
panentheistic EarthDays
and dualdark wiki-nights
potentially bicameral
bipartisan
bisexual
binomial
neurosystemic cooperative regenerations
of win/win resonant
robust images

Any nonbinary person
all growed up
in a homophobic
straight
white
male anthrosupremacist monoculture
must not fail to see
to hear
to smell
to feel

Will have trouble...

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Unquotable quotes: Fat People – XXIX

(I know this piece sounds mean and cruel but as every single parent must have experienced, this is also the expression of utter exasperation, and perhaps there’s also the slightest...

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POETIC PREFACE:

An inner conflict dust brew
within this scribe, who offers ye to chew
(like sweet treats metaphorically) thee do
tee incumbent, when Doomsday clock
counts down minutes few
according Al Gore rhythm
unstoppably ticking,
when life gets turned to global goo
tenderized...

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Theoretical abstractions,
reductive hard word choices,
to describe and prescribe spiritual experiences
are unsatisfactory for daily consumption and absorption
as they reify exceptions to your Business As Usual,
which is probably LeftBrain patriarchally dominant.

Exceptional Left-Right bicameral ego/eco-consciousness,
of natureLeft-spiritRight nondual co-arising...

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Sometimes pandemic people share
pieces of our unspeakable personal story

That no health care worker,
sex therapist player,
or green resonant systems organizer
wants to hear,
much less smell,
or touch,
or deeply feel...

I flinch, sometimes.

Wince.

Maybe flirt with longer-term
dissociation,
to protect myself
from suicide
to protect...

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All things that glow and move,
all things that change and pass,
I gather their delight
as in a burning-glass;
Judith Wright

The Queen's Conjurer
1.
'Given to magic and uncanny arts'
'Art mathematical' to make strange works
 Genius of movement artificial
Mechanical scarab...

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Our minds play
an eisegetical game
transubstantiating our debating minds
translating our felt bodies
embodied contexts

Natural/Spiritual environments
felt yet untouched messages
spoken through ancient metaphoric narratives
polypathic tales
multiculturing mysteries
sacred polytheistic histories

Felt 
egocentrically thoughtful
inside

Touched
exterior-invested
sacred trans-pantheistic skin
outside transparent reverence
for all born vulnerably holy
within and...

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I can't sleep.
Or, I can
and did
for three hours
but I continue waking
into a Stephen King nightmare
too real to ignore
because I feel isolated
in this quagmire
of hopeless history.

In this my collective nightmare,
President Trump goes to Saudi Arabia
like Mr....

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Inapropos trois faux pas jokingly blurted out...

yesterday August 30th, 2022.

The following fictitious account
predicated upon words spilling
out me mouth before taking time
to think through how sarcastic remark
would affect primary listener.

Comments about marital matters
particularly ours (yours truly...

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…..BREAKING..... HEADLINE..... NEWS.....
this Xmas eve day 2023

After a top secret clandestine conclave,
one or more sans eight Reindeer forsake
played cow word, and spelt, spilt, spoilt,
et cetera doe fill full heartbreak,
which Santa Claus immediately claimed
to be “FAKE”...

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Earth day 2020 – Wednesday, April 22

Bajillion banshees scream bloody murder methought
upon Biblical (lionized) forebears stalking heads
birthed courtesy accursed beasts hood besought
winds howl across the oblate spheroid
methinks courtesy Homo sapiens horror wrought.

Climate change/global warming siren...

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Darkness still needs to be a portion of the sky,
It symbolizes grasping the cosmic matrix. 
Alas, it did not rise by a twist. It's the basics,
As morrow never rolls to spell crux truth, high.

A spark of...

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Children's Poems VII

These are poems for children and poems about children and their mothers, fathers, grandmother, grandfathers and extended families. 



Sailing to My Grandfather, for George Hurt
by Michael R. Burch

This distance between us
—this vast sea
of...

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He Lived: Excerpts from “Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death...

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After a top secret clandestine conclave,
one or more eight Reindeer forsake
played cow word spoilt,
et cetera doe fill full heartbreak,

which Santa Claus immediately claimed
to be “FAKE” and accused (Jake)
i.e. Jacob Marley concocted game over, 
every doe...

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The alphabets were standing in a line 26 strong,
The Language Door Keeper knew at once something 
was wrong...
No verbs or nouns or personifications, no sentence
structures, or punctuation. 

What is the problem The Language Door Keeper...

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Climate change
does nearly
but not neatly cover up
discomforting complexities
of losing polyculturally rich ecosystems
like transportive air and water
and sacred communion
of sovereign feasting nations

Not really dealing with unresolved issues
like economic boundary chaos

Between each of four regenerative
and degenerative
annual cycling...

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I rest perched atop my tree branch blind,
watching and waiting
for anything to unknowingly pass below
I got sleek, midnight skin ... 
distinct markings of a black panther
I got white eyes that glow in the dark,
my vision...

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