Long Words fail 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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Poems about Children II



On Looking into Curious George’s Mirrors
by Michael R. Burch

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon

Maya was made in the image of God;
may the reflections she sees in those curious mirrors
always...

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The year that is about to make its last appearance 
before it dies and is buried to be only given a place 
in the history of our existence has brought  ?e joy, 
l° shall...

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What are words other than coffin nails be?
Who does it belong to when it rails me?
An empty vessel at best that bails thee.

Lend me your ear and draw your heart near;
my words might seer, but...

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The Tapestry of Leaves
Michael R. Burch

Leaves unfold
as life is sold
or bartered, for a moment in the sun.

The interchange
of lives is strange:
what reason—life—when death leaves all undone?

O, earthly son
when rest is won
and wrested from this ground,...

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I spend my nights playing with words.
I use them, and they use me.
We are a match, and when we work together,
we create magic. 
But there are nights like these,
where words fail me. 
They offer up...

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Sappho Translations XII by Michael R. Burch

In the following short translations the fragment numbers are mostly Lobel-Page. All translations are by Michael R. Burch and should be so credited if they are used in any...

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the inside attempting to outside
each with its own absurd shopping list
we are after all composite beings
clumps and aggregates and glomerations
made up from all the faces we have seen
all the people we have imagined to have...

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pansy, dandelion, ill`behavior, 
nopoe,^shrub_,thistle?
I have no idea 
who you think i am or was, 
Serotonin, Dopamine, Endorphin?

Could be i'm a Syntax error in line 150.
A Happiness Frequency,
now offering beautiful parting gifts.
Sharing way too much info
in...

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Journey starts
Kunming portraits;
Highway song


Here old and new
Merge yet apart;
Vignettes juxtapose


China welcomes
Both ancient and modern;
Sign of the times


Tour group confronts
Unfamiliar grounds;
Rough edges grind


Quaint ways of old
Ancient tales displaced;
Modern day norms intervene


Spectacular vistas
Natural wonders;
Man seems insignificant


Flood tide...

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I hear it though a friend
and my knees begin to bend.
"It's Sasha"

My eyes grow,
the world begins to slow.
my heart stops beating
logic is fleeting

Hands quiver,
a gut-wrenching thought
clings hold in my chest

Vision blurrs,
tears well up,
lungs get tight.

8...

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Musing Lately

Let’s just say
with my husband now having heart troubles and my 
being old (& bedridden while waiting for my new prosthetic-leg) makes for on-going thinking, remembering, observing, reflecting, tentatively concluding, believing
how the ineffable ultimately...

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In the shadows of a fractured consciousness, where words fall like shattered glass,
The man, unable to articulate, to express with clarity, retreats into action.
His thoughts, like wild horses, gallop through the vast and tumultuous plains...

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We owe it to our doctors 
 


We owe it to our doctors… 
The ones who took it to be part of Sun Pharma’s greater mission;
 
To prevent disease rather cure
Cure and control if that happens at all; 
Defying...

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I can’t afford for this one to fail

She was just a stranger

And somehow we ended up in the same 

Space and time

Now, mother nature is taking over once more

And I am admiring your attributes

The strands...

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They say if you don’t use a thing for a year
It’s time to get rid of it, just to be clear
Feel free to sell it or give it away
But to get clutter free, just don’t...

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Here it is again
That sudden uneasiness
The alarms are going off in my body
My heart begins to pound
The blood rushes to my head
I can't think clearly
My mind starts to crave safety from something...
In my mind I...

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Sensitive skin 
Scraped by sensitive information
If I don't know who I am, then what will I tell everyone? 
A scuba diver without his mask is just a body in water 
A father without a child...

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Three years deep into freedom
And yet perhaps as tied down now as I was then
Scars are scars because they do not vanish
Fade as they might, that skin is numb forever

As a being made of scar...

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When my words fail, 
How should I speak? 
When my tongue stills,
What should I let leak? 

When my words failed me first, 
I had caught just a glimpse, a glint, of you 
And my sight,...

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Journey Journal Page
UNKNOWN DREAMS
By Leon Enriquez


Dark is the night
When dark blots light
Feel pulse now stream
Dream within dream


Here for brief while
Dark touch now piles
Lost vision here
Of long lost cheer


Feel strange odd sigh
Can a dream die?
Grope blindly...

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-----------------------------
A Rose by Another Name
-----------------------------

In prose, I suppose and even rhymes 
words, mere words can cut at times.
Still I suppose, every word is a rose. 

At times in rhymes and sometimes prose,
though torn by thorns,...

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#Another_Pastor_viral
Ancestors exchange grave turning with Christ, shame and tabooed, religion painted, men claiming and looting from the poorer, shaming and tainting the believe 

From calling themselves pastors to now, prophets, revelation has foretold, the time...

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A smile on her face and a gleam in her eye*,
As she kisses him on lips and adjusts his tie,
A day long wait to surprise him at the door,
joy of motherhood can’t be contained anymore!...

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Is it all that expectation provided
everything you anticipated
the experience to describe
the emotive essence of breath
there in the whirlwind of seconds conglomerated
became you the momentum of ecstatic

When words fail to be reiterated
did the sun press upon...

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