Long Verbs Poems

State of the Art (III)

These are my "ars poetica" poems: the ones about the art and craft of writing poetry in a modern world that doesn't always recognize the artists or their work. 



Come Down
by...

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SELF REFLECTIONS

These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections, impressions and self-reflection. 

Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch 

for anyone struggling with self-image

She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she's grossly...

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Poems about Poems IV

The Toast
by Michael R. Burch

For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak...

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Why does dawn dress robust morning,
while dusk undresses sight?
Each dawn incarnates another Earth Day
a lifetime of Easter mornings 
redeeming nocturnal sight's revolution,
another therapeutic day of gift-it-forward light,
some longer,
some shorter 
before naked covered night.

Why life?
To uncover...

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Native American Translations

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own...

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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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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 feels its meaning—
the...

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Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch 

(dedicated to my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr.)

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long...

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So, if I understand correctly,
you want to respond to inevitable energy descent
by upgrading incentives for cooperative communication,
positive information expansion,
research and regenerative design,
implementation,
and ecopolitical evaluation strategies?

Yes,
because we achieved current WinWin cooperative communication
and organic networking capacities
by virtue...

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These are poems about Dylan Thomas, as well as poems "for" and "after" Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas was one of my favorite poets from my early teens and has remained so over the years. I...

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Myth, after Dylan Thomas
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low...

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I wanted to write
 The best slavery poem   ever written—
Perhaps win a Pulitzer or Faulkner. 

I had every intention of conforming 
To the standards 
Of modern verse and composition, 
Lyrics fluidly written, 
Perfect...

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Sonnets LXXI-LXXX

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you...

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Invocation to the Muse

From the gleaming skin of life’s underbelly, 
sin unreconciled, formed from Nephilim seed,
fleet footed jokers mask pawns into flight;
To the epistle of the Most High.
For in the beginning, the true and only...

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I met a proper woman in a proper pub on a Monday in Peoria. It was noon, time for lunch, and we were sitting stool to stool over very large burgers at a long mahogany...

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What I have for you today is not so much about re-treading an outdated fuel-based system--
little bit like reshuffling the chairs to fix the decay 
of a segregating Country Club.

No, this is addressed to economic...

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FOUR TENETS OF CREATIVITY


PERCEPTION PARTURATION PUBLICATION PARTICIPATION

 

     




INTRODUCTION


This short  eBook encompasses my experiences of the creative in both art and poetry in particular.The content of each of the four...

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Language,
linguistic evolution,
dynamic verbs, relational events
function through co-arising root systems,
nouns for actor and reactor,
co-arising preactive Ego-faith perpetuating,
dipolar reiterating
seasonal-sequential eco-health
regeneratively prime relational.

Systems are dynamic ecoverb phases,
to function systematically, reasonably, with pattern, is why "system"
ecosystemologically includes biosystemologic,
polyculturally polymorphic...

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Potawatomi language,
says Robin Wall Kimmerer,
does not verbally divide us into masculine and feminine.
However, unlike most English verbs,
Potawatomi verbs distinguish between animate and inanimate objects.

For example,
we use sit down
when speaking to an unruly son
and set down
when...

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Fr. Time, thanks for coming back again today.

Well now, you know I always have plenty of time
for Ms. Integrity!

Thank you for that rather cloying and creepy response.
I talked to FireGod a few days ago, 
were...

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I took the only seed of hope
for any future healthy Truffula Trees,
but reminded my clinically depressed acquaintance
we are all born co-redeemers,
not addictively incubating extractors.

Ours is not to commodify 
what we could not recreate
for its sufficient...

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"I am circling around love,
around the throbbing hum,
and I have been circling for thousands of days,
and I still don't know if I am a wounded saint,
or a rainy dawn,
or a creation story."
Rob Brezsny, in Pronoia

You...

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I. THE WANDERING

I was born with a life that bled—
a seafloor womb
dragging tides of fern
and marigold char

The priests brought saffron
and fear

crowning me with diagnosis

They said: She is too empty
They said: Fill her with figs
with seed
with...

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It's not that I mistrust you,
though sometimes I feel I must distrust
either me or you.

I ambivalently choose both.

So yes, of course, this is about your behaviors
in trust-relationship with mine,
aggressive and impulsive.
Behaviors of addiction
to a child's...

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The Anatomy of a Kural: Maxim Number 245 (taken at random) of the Thirukkural, the Tamil Classic on Ethics by Thiruvalluvar 

allal arulaalvaarkku illai valivalangum

mallalmaa naalam kari (K245)

“The teeming earth's vast realm, round which the...

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