Long Unsettling Poems

Poems about Poems (II)

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss?
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves...

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Sonnets XXXIII-XLI

The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and...

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State of the Art (II)

These are my "ars poetica" poems about the art and craft of writing poetry. 



What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer 
~~~~underwater~~~~
watching the shoreline...

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Why do questions hope to end with answers
while answers seem to never end 
without yet more questions?

As a case in point...

How are the Case Studies of economic and political history
different than Einstein's Thought Experiments?

Wait a...

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CRISIS TEAM:HELLO WE ARE HERE TO HELP  

AGENT BROWN: HELLO I AWAKEN EVERY NIGHT BETWEEN  THREE OR FOUR AM I CANNOT BREATHE PANTING HEARING MY FETUS HEARTBEAT SO LOUDLY 

CRISIS TEAM: YOU ARE...

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Rian sat puzzling in his suite in the Keep.   His thoughts in disarray,  jumping from one concern to another without any logical order.  He sat before a desk that once was...

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Poems about Poets I


The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch

for Leslie Mellichamp

The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true ...

but...

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Sings the story at twilight 
When the moon is just rising, 
Sings a simple troubadour 
The short tale of life. 

How a fine boy, 
Born in a palace, 
A palace like crystal, 
Became a proud...

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"A dressed day has disrobed into the depth of a drawer's nightstand." 

(Oh, how positively awesome that what can be sorted out in such an explanatory pattern that a difference would maketh a day.)

The muskiness...

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anxiety, intense -
but I am not frightened ...
my heart races ... I want to flee
my blood heats and lies to
my senses ...
'get out! go now! dear gawd, fool, run!!'
for you are formidable -
eighty inches tall,...

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Stimulate me with your merry laughs and smiles of gladness 
Give me a taste of paradise and feed me delicacies of grace
Let us both seek rejuvenation above the sweet remedies of bliss 
Uplift my bland...

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I want to respond
to the retired Marine
who watched Democratic Congressional Leaders
during the State of our crippled Union event,
disappointed at how their patriotism,
their loyalty to sacred sacrifices of soldiers
appears too tepid,
jaded,
ungrateful
as compared to more thunderous enthusiastic...

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My goal isn't so much to win the wars of property management,
self and spouse and family governance
as it is to enjoy this struggling with Earth's nature/spirit properties,
and my own and others' humane properties of integral...

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I was in the shotgun seat
in 1960 Lansing Michigan
headed straight as a harddrive
through ghettoizing "Negra Section"
hunting down our commercial whitebread 
heavenly ThriftyAcres

Wanna be a WalMart ImPlantation
but not Southern enough,
somehow,
to withstand straight-male competition
in fluent White Privileged...

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In all my artist wanderings 
Traveling through these great lands of ours

Places visited or lived in, diverse, memorable
Many messages I received...

As did so many that passed before me
Passing through each wilderness
Learning new steps to take.

...

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A child lights our way in life...
The greatest gift there is to be.
They suppress our selfish inclinations...
They set our passions free.

They give sense to our mortality.
They put narcissism in its place.
With a child... you're a...

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I just can’t get over this unsettling feeling
 That has my spirit reeling
I just cannot get over this unsettling feeling
That keeps me yearning
If someone had hit me with a stone
Then I would have taken the...

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Sipping in solitude inaudibly,
I feel left behind like an orphan child, 
Waiting for a stranger’s ride, 
I was left on the front steps of someone else’s house and I’m left to be
An introverted child, brokenhearted,...

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Doomsday Clock minute hand...

hovers over 100 seconds to midnight 
as of January 2022, 
which apocalyptic prognostication
established by the Bulletin 
of Atomic Scientists
maintained since 1947, 
the clock quantifies a metaphor 
for threats to humanity 
from unchecked...

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There is no excuse for ignorance
You must know when you were born
There is no excuse for ignorance
You are sucking the energy out of the popcorn
And fooling everybody about your naked charity
There is no excuse for...

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Have I failed you as a man?
Our only communication was what washed up on shore 
But there's so much space between the ocean floor and the sand 
One cascades and the other crystalizes 
But you...

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In the heart of the forest, where the ancient trees stand tall
Lies a world untouched by time, where nature’s whispers call
Tribal people live in harmony, with the land and sky so wide
Their spirits intertwined with...

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I was a highly competitive,
and chronically frustrated,
public and private sector grant writer
before I turned to this prose-poetry research format,
inspired by reading Buckminster Fuller's universal Left Hemisphere
synergetic with, and never dissonant against,
his Right Hemisphere's unitarian-holistic flow
wave-linear...

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A Thousand Points of Light! ! ! ! !

Once a beacon of democracy
A shining light on the hill
The ‘American Dream’
	Anyone can ‘make it’  
Never more than aspirational
Structurally delusional

Always susceptible to its 
	Achilles heel of...

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Oh, why now? I had prayed for three more years,
Man lived, then we all die, and our resting is decided by a mortal,
Should it be with your father or mother or be by yourself?
I had...

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