Song Prison Poems

(Lights dim, a single spotlight illuminates Judy Garland, center stage. She wears a faded housecoat, her eyes holding a lifetime of stories. She speaks directly...

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Love lives on the other side
It may as well abide
On another planet,
These chains on my heart
And my spirit behind bars,
I am far from touch
Exiled from...

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My new canary no more sings;
such grave chagrin her silence brings.
My friend said, "With my violin
I'll teach your bird to sing again".

He played a haunting...

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The Underworld 

There is a path
that leads to the bridge. 
Well, not exactly. 
It leads under it. 
Why would anyone want to go that way?...

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In my quietude not all is quiet -
  the glowworms glow and the bush crickets sing,
and by his haunting song does fly and flit...

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A god mended in string and wired corsets, armature. 
The blackened police the striders in the dark… 
a crippled plaything, 
a hymn of the tourniquet...

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When there
is nothing
to 
do
but 
write
but
you cannot
feel
the 
song

***
kira-marie-mccullough.com...

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The guards said I couldn't make it 
But, there's one not talking now.
     He not talking now. 
They’ll find him in...

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The Scales of Justice didn't tip my way,
I figure from the dues I've had to pay.
While thumbing down to Shaky Town 
I thought I turn...

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The landscape that is made 
by the very tapestry we ourselves weave, abides; 
as babes we unknowingly absorb
the sustaining juice from the insipid pulp; 
we...

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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...

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Charles d'Orleans: a Medieval Marvel


Spring
by Charles d’Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and...

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Caresses my soul the way only a lover knows
To touch, embracing with a furious feeling of
Dread and intimidation, wisdom and inspiration
Thoughts flowing with rich scarlet...

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Tuning William Blake's Whistle
by Michael R. Burch

a musical prophecy, after William Blake

I.

Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.

I did not...

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Finally to Burn: Icarus, Resurrected
by Michael R. Burch

Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand

and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands

where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting

and Passion seems
like...

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