Long Uprooting 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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As winter hazes of January spraying
While I was meditating on how
To write this riveting poem which
Seemed to be for someone who
I never cast in my sight.
Despite her name is not an odd in me
But I...

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Poems of Recanted Bachelorhood

bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch

u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly ALARMING
since my resolve
dissolved!

*

Disconcerted
by Michael R. Burch

Beth, my sweet,
fresh as a daisy,
when I’m with you
my heart beats like crazy
& my future gets hazy ...

*

What Goes Around, Comes
by...

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The First Valentine Poem

Charles d’Orleans (1394-1465) has been credited with writing the first Valentine poem for his wife in 1415. Charles wrote the first Valentine poem in the first year of his captivity while being...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (I)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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April 9th, 2024 would be ninety fifth birthday poem for dearly departed papa

The following words crafted soon after the soul of me daddy set adrift into the empyrean realm joining the rank and file of...

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POEMS ABOUT EROS AND CUPID

These are translations of ancient Greek poems about Eros. Eros was the Greek counterpart of the Roman god Cupid. While today we tend to think of Cupid as an angelic cherub...

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LOVE POEMS I by Michael R. Burch

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch: original poems and translations about passion, desire, lust, sex, a first date and dating, a first crush, a first girlfriend and...

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"We have an enemy within called the ego
who prevents us from using our mind intelligently.
It hides deep within our heart
and emerges with regularity
to challenge and consume our will."
     Rumi (M. Mafi,...

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April 9th, 2023 birthday poem for dearly departed papa

Borne aloft into the netherland
the body bearing thee soul   
of Boyce Brandon Harris
birth name given to my late father
buoyed aloft united with spirit
of mine late...

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Emancipation proclamation from Samson fixation

Otherwise titled deep into my fiftieth year of passive aggressive rebellious puberty.

Yes, I chickened out getting a haircut yesterday August twenty seventh two thousand and twenty four as stated in a...

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We have an enemy within called the ego
who prevents us from using our mind intelligently.
It hides deep within our heart
and emerges with regularity
to challenge and consume our will.
       ...

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Love is a catastrophe, a bittersweet madness, a wild affliction that invades your soul,
Disturbs your peace, devastates your routine, transforming you into a shadow of what you once were,
Each moment under its spell an odyssey...

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In the temple of the shadows of the century, where moments are lost in metallic echoes,
Technology has wrapped its cold tentacles around the human soul, without us realizing,
A worldly instrument, propagated as a divine purpose,
Pulling...

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UNDERBELLIES


What underbelly is this 
          containing quiet grasping greed for
my magical sword gifted to me by St Michael ?
       What...

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Sunday morning
time for sabbath sacraments.

He steps into gusty wind,
some fat splatter sweeps of raindrops
fall across his porch roof
on down through roaring river valley,
forceful push, then ebb

February wind storm
raining down warm wet,
a wondrous primal pair
he adores.

Neighbor...

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Where are you going when the sun is shining? Where are you going when the tempest is raging? The shadows are burnt out of the sky; and the clouds are rolling by with a strange...

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Sappho fragment 22
loose translation by Michael R. Burch 
 
That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.
 
NOTE: This is a translation of...

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On a footpath of a street she lay,
It was dark outside her and inside.
Bruised hands, cut lips, dying soul,
She didn’t remember how much she had cried.

At the time he had left her and gone
And she...

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Emotional guillotine clefts
     irredeemable psychological umbilical accord
witnessing heart breaking,
     woe-begotten inhumane rip cord
gut wrenching shuffle board
     (indiscriminately sporting)
     most...

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Preposterous Eros
by Michael R. Burch

“Preposterous Eros” – Patricia Falanga

Preposterous Eros shot me in
the buttocks, with a Devilish grin,
spent all my money in a rush
then left my heart effete pink mush.


These are poems about Eros, the...

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SAPPHO TRANSLATIONS

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.
—Sappho, fragment 42, translation by Michael R. Burch



Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No droning bee,
nor even the bearer of honey
for me!



Sappho, fragment 113
loose translation/interpretation...

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for The Beloved, a night at Nedjima Bar (Ankara, Turkey)

… hypnosis shattered by atomic jiggling, salivation of song on your brow,
channeled chaos of body, spastic sound, tantrum of dark delight, unbuttoned vibrations   ...

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Come take a walk with me
let us stroll the savannah
I want to show you the beauty
to introduce you to East Africa

A land seeped in dark history and mysteries
where once the Tembo roamed in their thousands
mighty...

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(alternately titled: Whew...
so glad I chose absentee/ mail-in ballot),
and agitate (poetically)
November presidential election
brings requisite equality.

Unforeseen (unprecedented)
stiff competition with protesters
crowdsourced within major
Pennsylvania metropolitan areas
necessitating president

to confront inconvenient truth
he (whom even
Voldemort would not name)
must trumpet forth progressive
unilateral...

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