Long Wanderer Poems

The Field
by Rumi 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Far beyond sermons of right and wrong there's a sunlit field. 
I'll meet you there. 
When the soul lazes in such lush grass 
the world is too...

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Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain...

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Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!



I choose to love you in silence
by Rumi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I...

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(A somnambulistic drama in four acts)

Actors:

Jean-Paul Marat; 
Charles Barbarou;
Charlotte Corday;
1st Philosopher;
2nd Philosopher;
The Commentator’s Voice.

Act 1. A tavern. Two philosopher sit at the table; 
Marat sits at the other, some distance away.

1st Philosopher 

…or even worse:...

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In the darkness of the night, 
a ruby gleams 
to contrast a slumbered eye awakened 
to feeling, 
reflection, light, 
Lady "Genie", eyes aglow
like a beast, in mid-stride,
lost in her midnight dreams is clothed in a...

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A Dark Identity

Days into nights... time without time
Normalities of everyday life beckons to remain
Shadows with lights.... to find to define
I am he who goes by without a name

The world is only up to date
And I’ve...

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Graveyard love



My love is dead, the woman too, and love is an emotion. They are lost.
My feeling of love, which lived in me until now, but was discarded a long time ago.
I was dumped, trampled,...

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I'D GO OUT ON A LIMB                             ...

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“Upon Waking”


Slumber has its upsides 
while the outside runs around
like a split fowlyard, 
cacophonous 
pecking at each other 
and at the ground…

Elsewhere, 

like dull background noise
through the fog of dream 
the sound of the gamble...

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Facilities that claim they recycle spew nothing but rubbish
as does yours truly,
whose ecological ethos
goes out the window
into the cold freezing iceland
prompting the following balderdash.

Upon the advent of an unexpected inspection
slated for tomorrow January 24th, 2025
myself...

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Unique
Hi An Cest Or,
Have you heard of the mediator?

       An Cest Or
Of course, unique, 
He's the mender of techniques.

         Unique
Did you...

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THE CHIMNEY
The once fine air, refreshens with dust
Between the village horizon and crest
Since the sailing of a death chemical chimney.

Young green plants seedlings growing on slope
Are left to sip these  carcinogenic dusts, sapling
And entwined...

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The Killing Field”

Ariana nodded, tremolo fingers,
and they ran across the killing field,
watching the steel-toed kite ascend—
a fleeting instant of triumph in the vacuum.
Josh scoffed as it dipped,
both caught in the pull of the abyss,
falling but...

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The Killing Field”

Ariana nodded, tremolo fingers,
and they ran across the killing field,
watching the steel-toed kite ascend—
a fleeting instant of triumph in the vacuum.
Josh scoffed as it dipped,
both caught in the pull of the abyss,
falling but...

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No one is willing to answer my phone calls unfortunately
Nobody cares to save me or love me deliberately
I’m sorry, this is how I tremendously feel
But, of course, obviously, it’s no big deal

Negativity wraps around my...

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The range in its majesty gives way to open thoughts of the wild things in taming, I have eaten hard pan and dust as my regular meal to be had.

I to the constant trail beaten...

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Poetry Soup Kitchen

On a dark and stormy night, when the temperature plummeted to zero below,
A poor soul was lost and frozen, in the cold and blinding snow.
All was darkness, all was quiet, all around, until...

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[An Autumn kitchen a crucible of y e a s t and y e a r n i n g]

Samantha kneads dough with determined hands, she hears
    Hank's cry—"Vi vi an"—a phantom...

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-Forget naught-

So soon after supper, you’ve forgotten
Those ones you called your alter egos.
Said adieu and you did not stay o!
So soon you forgot those ones?						

The one you met and greeted in clan,
During moon, storm, wind,...

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I peered deeply into a water trickling  dyke clustered by pale blue and green peebles.
“Oh dear I sometimes dig too deep or maybe not diffidently.
Damon Deep thinker, lost in thought type.”
There is that mind...

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         O The Mothcode, Umm Yes

            The Dance of Light :

In twilight’s silverly hush, where shadows...

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In the labyrinth of night, I wander, seeking echoes of a lost era,
To be modern means to delve into the incurable,
To plunge into the depths of the soul's festering wounds,
Each scar a testament to battles...

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Some men die to survive

	the Hard endures
the Soft succumbs   stews in juices  reproduces exults
			disappears
the heartless breaks cracks crumbles
							drags
   the Ephemeral down the ravines of the also-ran rivers
								   ...

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“The Lord will show Me, 
Has shown me, where your mind lies….”

I began to wonder if I was lost in that statement to him,
That fear and desire had blinded me to rush such an assertion
Upon...

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In a boundless night, under the sky where the stars burn like the lost thoughts of a sleeping god, I feel suspended between worlds,
in a silence that sings echoes from unseen universes, where time flows...

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