Long Wring Poems

Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems V - Ber Horvitz, Yitzkhak Viner, Franta Bass

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes....

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UNQUOTABLE QUOTES: L (50) - Tongue-Teasers

The « early bird catches the worm » only because the worm has not woken up yet.

« I don’t love you ! I hated your father ! » - must...

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I, heart on sleeve ... proudly? I suppose, in a contrite way ...
          but it's beyond my breadth to control, so it is what it IS.
...

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This was only our second date...

A Black Tie Affair...

...Set against an incredible view,
vineyards, waterfalls,
a plentitude of flower beds,
all just outside a charming postcard Town.

This indeed was a serious event,
anyone  who was anyone...
and my date...were here.

A...

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I never told anyone how my ears reverberate in a silent room.
The whirring drone ever present, a conquistador of my private spaces.
This is my cohabitation with an industrial generator.
But I’ve graduated from the torment. 
My...

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I see me, 
seeing me..
In the surface of a reflection...
I see the past, the present
And a future not yet mentioned.
Who am I on the opposite side
Of that reflection?
This man that lives and breathes
With all these...

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When I was just a teenage lad, and growing up out west
I never wore a cowboy hat or fancy leather vests,
never put on cowboy boots or western shirts with snaps,
never wore tooled leather belts, much...

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Act 4.

Marat

Where do these tears come from? My makeup
is melting in the spotlight. She has gone.
Oh, how I wished to tell her… I did not.
I wished to tell but I forgot the words
to say according...

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She was having a certain level of difficulty discerning the exact moment it had started. She knew it started somewhere…everything else did. Maybe it had been during the summer that she could not smile. Not...

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The Corpus Christi Carol
anonymous Middle English poem
translation by Michael R. Burch

He bore him up, he bore him down,
He bore him into an orchard brown.
Lully, lullay, lully, lullay!
The falcon has borne my mate away.

In that orchard...

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ZEN DEATH HAIKU III

Spring
stirs the clouds
in the sky's teabowl
—Kikusha-ni, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight I saw
how the peony crumples
in the fire's embers
—Katoh Shuhson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Both victor and vanquished are dewdrops:
flashes...

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Anti Establishmentarian - hashtags himself as antithetical

The following poem crafted 
not quite thirty months ago,
when severe bad hair day
found yours truly self sequestered
toying with notion 
to coif, primp, and tease, his limp locks,
(whose hirsute trademark...

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War used to be some other place
Out of sight and mind;
But now we see on our tv
The worst of humankind.

An army has just marched across
Another country’s border,
Wreaking murder, unprovoked,
And violent disorder.

Are we so blind? We...

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From ‘The Woe of Roanoke ‘
It wasn’t just the gale that chilled his skin
As he mulled on the cannibal captured within.
In trembling state he clenched close his cane
To rap tap the gate of the jail...

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My father was born,
Late on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day,
Inspiring nurses to insist the babe’s name be Patrick,
To which, my grandparents laughed and chose to obey.

Decades later, 
When my parents had their first son,
Though...

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What do the dodgers dodge? 
Remind me to lace up my socks, 
Put on my boots and be born again.
Trained and ready, steady, go! 
An old man’s antlers in the rutt,
Dangling keys riding on hips...

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What do the dodgers dodge? 
Remind me to lace up my socks, 
Put on my boots and be born again.
Trained and ready, steady, go! 
An old man’s antlers in the rutt,
Dangling keys riding on hips...

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When I was just a wee young thing 
I was taught life's lesson well    
Ere instead of childhood revelry 
mine would be a children's hell    
   ...

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Worries brought me low
I just wanted to let you know
I heard the feline's purr
I felt her soft, fluffy fur

Heartfelt, pretty kitty
Her love is not itty-bitty
She is absolutely pretty 
She loves me and I love her…
And...

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I'd like to sit beside myself, if only for awhile.
   I'd ask me how I do it, how do I always smile.
Id say "Because I have to. There is no other way."
 ...

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Pray,
If you should tell
All that you have bottled up
Who will you tell?
Who will believe you?
Stories of swollen head, slit lips
Blood, brimstone and bonfires 
Laboriously ignited to silence
Rats, rabbits, dogs, roaches and mosquitoes 
Stories of brazen...

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At the remote Carmacks trading post,
during eighteen hundred and ninety-four,
a teenage child, a scared-looking half-breed,
timidly entered through the front door.

Joel Claughtrey barely noticed the young man,
and was far more concerned with whiskey,
he took a long...

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(A Long Agonizing Conversion.



Out of the dark forbidding night,

 I Struggle now to see the light.

 I never felt this way before,

 Loved the lair of darkness more.



 Was careful in nothing, no good to...

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Deep breath
          Let it out, carry the blight
                  ...

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