Sufficient Poems

This week our play at self-distancing and living amid a pandemic became real. Before the empty shelves and cancelled events were annoying but we had sufficient toilet paper to last a good while and there was Tiger King on Netflix....Read More

Virtuous woman: she exemplified
Compassionately firm, steadfastly right
Blissfully cheering to make each day bright
Sharing sweet kindness with faith fortified.

Pastor’s wife whose smile unceasingly glows
Mom caring for kids in her gracious poise
Unmindful of heart ailment’s weary noise
A friend to hear shared times...Read More

A sapphire moon has come to rest
upon evening’s blue lake crest;
faeries conduct concert crickets
and frogs sound bass among the thickets.

In umbral movement shadows weave
playing round about the trees;
a glowing orb of celestial light
upon horizon, sits with delight.

Tree branches wave their...Read More

If men ruled the world,
There would be room in the garage for the car,
There would be less pollution,
As everyone would take first available car park, 
Instead of keeping the engine running and double parking
While waiting for one closest to shop...Read More

CORONA VIRUS (COV-19)

The Black Death, or bubonic plague, which happened nearly 700 years ago, (in the three year period of 1347 to 1351 in which it lasted) took the lives of an estimated 75 to 200 million people.  It...Read More

Todesfugue ("Death Fugue")
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
We’re digging a grave like a hole in the sky;
there’s...Read More

Flash of light enormous, pass through the sky
Pilgrims to different sites in accord with season’s cry 
Exactly on the same flyway for ages they fly;
Bar-headed Geese in flight dwell in sky infinite
They live in central Asian coldest lakes in summer...Read More

Today's focus will be on the environment,
Particularly the usage of plastic,
Which is seriously to its detriment.
The situation is becoming drastic:
Plastic now dumped at an alarming rate,
Which can be expected to accelerate,
If our heads remain buried in the sand,
Leaving future generations...Read More

It was a symmetrical disorder
With hidden messages
In the spaces and gaps;
It was a sufficient affair,
A journey to the Light.

Journey to love,
Journey to work,
Trials to love,
Trials to work,
Abundance to poverty,
Trials to both work and love,
Journey to religion,
Journey to the Light.
...Read More

Again, with Adam Robersmith,
Taking It Further emphasizing cooperative value choices
in each compassionate win/win moment
of sacred economic/ecological dialogue,
covenants of non-violent respect for multigenerational 
healthy 
wealthy
robust
resonant
resilient outcomes.

What compassionately discerning choices
can we make today
tonight
tomorrow
the next day
next week
next month
next season
next year of seasons
for restoring...Read More

More Yang/Yin Conversation with Adam Robersmith

Robersmith (p. 47, Justice On Earth): 
"...science is showing us something important:
We are affecting our climate
and ecosystems
in ways that are detrimental to life
on the planet
and to how we live."

Yin: Science and conscience
are discovering and uncovering...Read More

My veil falls to my feet
I am at my most vulnerable
yet I lose my shyness easily in front of you
as your eyes acceptingly savor me.
I am in awe
of my ease of presence
and of your hunger of my being
in spite of...Read More

Bipolar

A yellowish day frolics with life, pleasantries errants the air, smiles
growing everywhere as man and beast are one with the leash, 
complacency occupies both time and space, the tenants,
of calmness and serenity moves in. That as being first
analyzed as a...Read More

Sometimes shadows are overwhelming 

In darkness we can find our strength 
In darkness we are never alone.  This helps me through the darkest times.  
Knowing I am not alone.

Jesus is holding my hand and beside me.  The...Read More

Struggling day by day with a heavy darkness searching for grace to erase my past.  

Every mistake is a painful wedge between me and a relationship with God.

I walk with my head down cast ashamed of myself, emotions, and...Read More

My internal experience of depression
today shames
external ecology of elation,
all I might know as warm extended family
of profoundly peaceful impressions
still bare surviving
at end of this slow-fading thread.

This morning
one Epictetus sentence
speaks of blaming left-hemisphere dominant GodVoices:

"People are disturbed not by things,
but by...Read More

Does it mean we are friends if I mirror your thoughts,
That we like the same jokes or our politics sing
A conventional melody?

Does the ground shake (we stand on) when boundaries slip,
When emotional dams burst, magnetic fields flip
As convection cells drift...Read More

Does the butterfly dream of (or gravitate more) to the form
That emerges from silk (spun cocoons)? Does the mist
Of a waterfall know it births rainbows, sense honor in fall?
Though it plummets scant inches or thousands of feet,
Does it know it...Read More

Lift ev'ry voice and cry
While all our children die
Raise up the deaf'ning sigh of misery
Let all the people hear
With ever-sharpened ear
How we have lost our dignity and pride
Long ago, we had community others desired
Long ago, we had prosperity to be...Read More

POETRY

Poetry says many things
Some of them very true
But poetry could ne'er express
The love God has for you.

The words existing in the world
Inadequately say
How faithfully He guides our feet
Along the narrow way.

Nor could our meager words express
His patience when we fail
Or...Read More

I feel such pain my soul aches.  

My soul aches.

No one tries to know my heart.

I am invisible unless I am in trouble.

People only see the bad.

Through it all there is God holding me saying 

“ my grace has...Read More

I see and hear a great overlap between
left-brain dominant education,
straight white male privileged political power,
and capitalist win/lose 
Elite ballistic gamesmanship.

But, as importantly,
what do you hear
see
feel
believe about ingredients for violating plutocracy
and for degenerative
fading public health
and competitive uncivil miseducation?

I have been listening,
sometimes...Read More

Malignant dreams tapestry displays;
Distance calls yet rhapsody preys;

Listen as the screams of humanity;
Malignant spirit hovering sways my chances;

Consistent, forbidding, indifferent pageantry;
Vision dripping of my enigma dances;

Thinking of visions  figmented imagination;
Indignant  humans and demonic nonmalignant;

Existence, forbidding, 
Sufficient, trans shipment's;



2/6/20
Written...Read More

There were five bridesmaids who were prudent
with lamps prepared having sufficient
   spare oil at the ready
   for lights to be steady.
The groom turned up late but was jubilant.

The other five bridesmaids were foolish.
Without oil their lamps...Read More

Plethora of humans (think overpopulation)
directly linkedin to planet Earth dire strait
re: environmental catastrophe, née debacle
teeters along brink tipping point inevitably
pitching civilization headlong into oblivion
Homo sapiens (minus those living off grid)
admirably self sufficient unto themselves,

perhaps ecological intentional community
while yours truly, one...Read More