Long Warsaw Poems

Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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"3 Way Azrael Asael" 

Simulate me
I am a clone 
IT said

Stimulate me
3 way clone
I am

Azrael 
Asael

(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)



“All is Full of Love” / Bjork
https://youtu.be/cbGSy6PKOb0






“And the LORD saw 
that the wickedness of man 
was great on...

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What is freedom?
The brief period of anarchy between the last tyranny and the next?
Are we free if we cannot see the cage?
Or feel the chains?
What if our masters lengthen our leashes?
Only to tighten their hold...

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Yahya Kemal Beyatli translations

Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) was a Turkish poet, editor, columnist and historian, as well as a politician and diplomat. Born born Ahmet Âgâh, he wrote under the pen names Agâh Kemal, Esrar,...

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It was a glorious day in 1943,
The kind of day you wish to hug your children carefree.
The frozen Polish Winter winds were almost dying,
The golden promise of Summer made everything sing,

It was very sunny on...

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If this were just a few short years ago
I would not be able to tell this tale,
since rhyming verse is not something that a
simple robot would choose as a travail.

It’s not that I wouldn’t know...

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from Juniper’s Daughter:                      
War Is Obsolete – Futility and Hope
By Nick Armbrister


Caught Up In...

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Back to Belfast

I have been to the Ghetto thrice
To Auschwitz twice
And to Belfast once
And to tell the truth
Belfast is the winner of the weirdest places 
Where I’ve ever been

But to be fair
That was just before...

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May 1974

Why do you need to waste your time today
Writing an elegy no one will read?

Add the half-cent to the cent
And text to shivering text
For you were born to text
And save-

But let her be 
She’s...

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I race around this track
To make the fastest lap
In powered muscle cars
You bet, I’m driving that
Wearing a fibre glassed rig
And a white cat suit
You can call me the stig 
The fastest thing on route




You’ve never...

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To the Western Statesmen

How long on earth do you ever wish to close your eyes to truth,
To waste your precious resources, to embitter your dear lives,
To take sinless souls of babies, the old as well...

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fuulisdec ascades dash bravened break drastic little pond ex mariner once sadi this
vergreener times two houndered thumder thugga kitty cats plenty of tracks
digital dilusional infuzsions cervival constelllation caner called me pathos
in regressions kent yerr i...

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Pan doktor my children called me, an orphanage to run.
I was educated in their German homeland but polish born. 
My children wrote a newspaper  and ran their own law courts.
I created a place of...

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Athens, quite a place, so full of mythology
Buenos Aires, in Argentina, a place I'd love to see

Canberra, is just antipodean class
Dublin, a pint of Guinness in a glass

Edinburgh, the capital of the Scots
Freetown, a city,...

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Willy Brandt was the German Chancellor 
Who mended fences after the Second World War
A journalist during the war who fled
To Norway and Sweden campaigning against the Nazis instead

There were many things he did to make...

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They slipped their chains and spread their brains
On walls of bricks and mortar,
Bared their teeth in their belief,
Prepared themselves for slaughter.

Howled aloud in the smoke and cloud
That prowled the streets and alleys,
The sounds they made...

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Warsaw 1940 certain inhabitants designated
A health risk were ordered to strip naked
Had to shower to become clean this ploy
Caused public humiliation, and showed
Dominence there was also mass quarrantine
Also to your own house that was
Useless in...

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Snow falls on the brittle leaves of birch trees,
their branches miraculously overlooked by the December wind.
It makes a sound like the marching feet of scary Germans rushing through Poland.

Snow, mixed with freezing rain, 
falls hard...

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Years aogo...
They were shoved in trains.
Tortured, many baked.
Showered with gas, their lives cut
cruelly short.
Some had surrendered guns to the 
almighty government.
So, learn the Warsaw ghetto lesson well
If not, you put you and your familys' life,
into...

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William Harris led an interesting life 
Travelled around Europe to find a wife
First on the list for the loving Mister Harris
Was the romantic and pretty city of Paris 

The Parisian girls were nice that's for...

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Dark Russia
It's a historical fact. They wanted freedom and for a time it felt real. But occupying forces occupied some more. Invading them with 2000 tanks and 500,000 men. Soviet style. 

100 freedom wanting people...

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Herded into a small city sector like sardines into a tin can;
Encased by constructing surrounding walls so they cannot get out again;
Imprisoned in their home country for the crime of being Jew;
The history of the...

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Hitler is burning
He burned yesterday
He will be burning tomorrow
He began to burn immediately 
after his last breath.
Hitler will burn forever.
He would gladly accept a drop
of cool water on his tongue
from the least of those at...

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Pangs of exile


In the season of the fallen leaf
Pangs of exile, pangs of grief
Should I join the expat web?
I will still receive The Sheaf
Pangs of exile, pangs of grief

I listen to a foreign tongue
The sound...

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Though Canton claims it’s communist, it’s not.
Beijing, like Belarus, breeds oligarchs.
There’s nobody alive who’s heard of Marx:
a rickshaw ride’s the only kind of trot.

Seek Mensheviks in Minsk, you’ll end with squat.
In Kursk are cadres countable...

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