Long Wrinkled Poems

Raisin liked to make her bed upon a shelf up high
She said she likes the feeling that she’s almost in the sky
One day she fell and bonked her head and Rum could only stare
And wondered...

Read More

See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are...

Read More

These are translations of some of the oldest Japanese waka, which evolved into tanka, renga and haiku. 

While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
—O no Yasumaro (circa 711), translation...

Read More

Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed...

Read More

I love you only because I love you
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
Between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates...

Read More

Yosa Buson haiku translations

On the temple’s great bronze gong
a butterfly
snoozes.
?Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hard to describe:
this light sensation of being pinched
by a butterfly!
?Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not to worry...

Read More

IT WAS 1984 DURING AN ELECTION CIRO GARGANO RAN THIS SMALL TOWN OUTSIDE GREATLAKES NAVY BASE WITH HIS DRUG CARTEL AND AN IRON FIST OF  CORRUPTION HE BLACKMAILED THE ENTIRE CITY SEVERAL OFFICERS SELLING...

Read More

Lumi's hand pressed upon his shoulder in a surprisingly firm grip guiding him into the dining area and to the second of two long slender tables where sat five older elves including DynDoeth.
  ...

Read More

I take a four-fold spin
through Bill Plotkin's wheel
of bilateral identities,
iconic developmental faces,
ironic personalities.


FIRST comes Eastern-born
dawn of human infancy,
Innocent Sage infants
so WiseElder
in our LeftBrain emergent
wrinkling unfolding 
sacred RightBrain ways.

Searching for care giving eyes
to be sure we...

Read More

Wovoka in the Feverland

In the Dying-Grass Moon came another winter to claim the old and sick.
This was when the first messengers came
To the desolation known as Pine Ridge.
They came riding in at the end of...

Read More

The Picture of Dorian Gray: Paint Me As An Event
The Picture of Dorian Gray, a decent fanciful novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde, published in 1890. The novel, the only one written by Wilde, had...

Read More

1.

                                  ...

Read More

,It's like some long lost fairy tale 
That's handed down through time
But couldn't be, as you will see
For this strange tale is mine.

I chose to take a country road 
I do from time to time
To...

Read More

Book One: Ancestors of the Ark

Ch.1: Welcome to the Village of Chapel Hill


     In a quiet little village far away from here, lives a Minister and his wife and the animal's...

Read More

"Barefoot in the Bushfires of the Vanities"



Heat rises slowly to rapture flames licking and teasing
Blue Ghostgums to stretch and crack wide open
as Fire spreads molten sweet sap bleeding burgundy all over 
amber gold wild bush...

Read More

WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

Read More

Back in the height
of our pre-millennial military-industrial
post-revolutionary days
of competing excess...

No, love,
Stick with
Once upon our Sacred Times...

Once upon a time
here in the US of Northern Americas
we used a Reservation Model
to dispose of hopelessly disabled aboriginals,
too RightBrain...

Read More

January 13th 2024 - Happy Lxv-th birthday Matthew Scott Harris

date of conception:?  ~ Late March – mid April 1958.
date of parturition: January xiii, mcmlix.
date of expiration:? January i, eminem, 
where earth, wind, and fire...

Read More

Happy Lxiv birthday Matthew Scott Harris

date of conception:?  ~ Late March – mid April 1958.
date of parturition: January xiii, mcmlix.
date of expiration:? January i, eminem.

A gangly, measly, and scraggly bundle
of lovely bones even as...

Read More

In the realm of moons and breathless tides,
where promises dance with a serendipitous sonnet of sunrises,
along with morning kisses, unfolds a love story—
a poetic novel etched in the chronicles
within the hourglass of time,
a journey that...

Read More

Embrace The Lines

Vitality marks gently stretch your soft skin beyond the wildest dreams of
beauty unbound where children had once or thrice embraced your womb
the soothing waters cushioning and cradling three miracles three water 
marks engraved...

Read More

Contest : The Prismatic Self
Sponsor : Daniel Henry Rodgers
Date submitted : 19/5/25

—————- 

“Contests around track, contests for followers,
for best tasting wine, most exquisite 
architectural design ~ endless
quests to become best versions of Self,
sharpen mind, mould...

Read More

With the Trolls passed out on the grass...the regrettable task
    now fell to the brave Talkalot.
He moved to the gate and taking a sip from his flask...
    he stared...

Read More

I’m so siced about the Barbie movie. I just watched the latest trailer. I felt a fluttering in the stummy.

Peter’s birthday was May 1st. “What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“A flash for...

Read More

Those who’ve gone on before me… what I would have liked to have told them – in those unsent letters, those unwritten stories, those unbroken promises, those unsteady poems, those unbleached memoirs – before the...

Read More