Long Wounded Poems

I woke up in the middle of the night with tears running from my eyes. I woke up in the middle of the night because my spirit cries
It is not the tear that falls when...

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Poems about Mothers


Mother's Smile
by Michael R. Burch

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much."

So more than "much, " much more...

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Various Heresies 3

Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now...

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Wounded Sacred Dementia: Part Two

Dementia's derelict WinLose SocialWorker
suboptimizingly hesitates
when I tell her
I have not changed my mind
about not adopting Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
into my vulnerable home
with a seven-year-old AfricanAmerican boy
blind
and unable to defend himself,
or even run...

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You've heard that self-unfulfilling prophecy?
"I love humanity--
it's just people I can't stand."

I love healthy humanity--
it's just uppity and/or snooty people I can't stand

I love cooperative humanity--
it's just overly-competitive individuals I can't stand.

Not so distant from,
I...

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Near Sainthood
by Mirza Ghalib
translation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

On the subject of mystic philosophy, Ghalib,
your words might have seemed deeply profound
and we might have pronounced you a saint...
if only we hadn't found
you...

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Enheduanna is the first writer we know by name. She created the first poetry anthology and hymnal, circa 2250 BC, in ancient Sumer. She was the daughter of King Saragon the Great. 

Lament to the...

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"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

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Hello,
you've reached the EcoTherapist Cooperative.
How can we help you
without bringing harm to Others?

That's a question I've never thought about.
I'm calling for the National Republican Party.
We would like to hire an EcoTherapist
for a consultation
during the 2020...

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Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

Quiescent unions...

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Poems about Things that Break I
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

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History’s Greatest Miracle Play

Let me tell you a story - Prologue

Actors gather to play their parts
To set the stage – backdrops and props –
In history’s greatest miracle play
Called to speak their lines
On redemption’s stage
In a...

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Today is assiduously
religiously different,
as I review our local RiverEast News.

Every week
Mike Thompson writes a solid Editorial
in a compelling voice.
I expect to only add
my hearty sacred
happy secular "Amen!"

Our nearly fearless Editor and Chief
calls for political "ACCOUNTABILITY!"
like...

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Poems about Things that Break III
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old...

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Wounded Sacred Dementia

My last foster care-provider
and -receiver story
is also a sad story
of my last special needs adoption
of bipolar born,
and oppositionally reared,
alcoholism.

My BiPolar Wounded Child
turned an auspicious five
on the day I first saw her,
and promptly rejected...

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Thanks for your letter
asking for a free Taoist consult
on how to bring God talk
and experience
back into our Big Agri-MilitantIndustrialized Busyness Schools
and possibly our extended family lives,
on into our inside Holy of Holies,
our Climates of PanEntheistic...

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Merov’s Ghost (1) and Other Shots Across My Bow!

In mid-November of Fourteen, I published my first web verse here, (2)
the earliest spanned sixty years, composed for Senior English class
one night in Nineteen Sixty-One. Assigned just...

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I'm working on this Systems Theory

All existing formal religious traditions
and informal spiritual experience 
of Great Sacred EcoLogical Transitions
[e.g. Holocene to 
Green AnthroScene;
HolySpirit to
Whole Holonic Natural Communion Systems]

Originally,
through our divine monotheistic
and/or polytheistic
and/or atheistic naturalistic branches
shared as...

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I am sorry
about my judgmental,
sadly disdainful,
tone
in earlier messages.

Even worse,
I remain embarrassed
for spreading it out
for key staff
and leaders
to well-positioned see
and hear
and feel,
touched by wounded toxicity.

My training 
and experience
includes victimized by homophobia
and healing through community mediation.

Within this...

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The dust had all but settled from the sultry morning air when Sergeant Kessler tapped me on the arm to wake me up.
“Gonna be a hot one,” he announced, “a chance o’ rain...and could get...

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We have something in common, a fellow I talk to now and then. We’re about the same age and perhaps the only ones in the diner who think our past lives are interesting. So when...

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Upon this date he spoke no more of the preceding moments, 
Tearing and hurling insult upon insult
In several directions, his tongue whipped and scorched me,
And he waited relentlessly to see the spark in my eyes...

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Where to begin
in the middle of cold and dark
winter's solstice,
healthy green life's time
of impeachment,
excommunication,
dormancy?

Where does this all rightfully
and sacredly left end?

These are expansive gadfly questions,
problems,
issues of complexly dipolar reason,
leftbrain dominant
either-or thinking
we are either thinking or...

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Perhaps infertile
incomplete
unwashed memories
of elder v younger,
Goliath v David,
crusades v communion
critical, yet part of chronic, events
speak extended family disengagement truth
to powerful dirty laundry engagement failures.

That disclaimer said,
I have two incomplete conversations
in mind and heart
and what I...

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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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