Long Extended metaphor Poems

Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the...

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Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us...

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Instruction
by Michael R. Burch

Toss this poem aside
to the filigreed and the wild tide
of sunset.

Strike my name,
and still it is all the same.
The onset

of night is in the despairing skies;
each hut shuts its bright bewildered eyes.
The...

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Poems about Poems VI

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood?
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the Muse
with reprimands of Dr. Seuss.

The...

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Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch
 
You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened...
 
You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching...
 
You...

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No Mark
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes, 
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before...

here where you have...

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Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

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A Vain Word
by Michael R. Burch

Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls
as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining
till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls
under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining
to the darkening...

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Myth, after Dylan Thomas
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand...

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Shared enthusiastic curiosity
between two or more

May also become felt 
as mutually assured
active hope
we might make it through dinner
without seeking reparations
while digging our way
through emotionally deserted
dessert

Curiously lingering faith 
in progressive integrity
of bilateral co-passions
and possibly multilateral
spiritual inside...

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Defecation accidentally clogged...

for the umpteenth time 
during spate to sit scrawny buttucks 
on porcelain throne id est 
videre licet toilet bowl...
with toxic water brew threatening
to overflow onto the floor,
and hence found yours truly (me)
immersing himself...

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Where is the shining city upon a hill?                           ...

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We are the days that we’ve become. 
moments dripping gifted from
the lounging clocks in rolling melted sightings, 
given by the gifted madness of a soulmate’s fightings. 

Our lives wrapped up in phrases coined
in books like,...

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A MINISTER RETIRES :  
SOLILOQUY 

I arise as infant Phoenix 
from Akasha ashes 
counterparts frozen 
with foibles intact
a still Arctic of death
sheath for recalibration 

Source Light breathes into 
fontanelle slowly sleepily  
Sekmet my...

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A pondering of multiple raindrops from a detrimental storm onto the empty fields, crashing into them as hard and loud as clashing metals. The depth and existence of love weighs over any deprivation an unexpected...

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The day was fine and sunlit,
Decorated by several clouds 
drifting aimlessly in the radiant ocean-blue sky.
Chorused by gentle puffs of the morning breeze,
Sending leaves on the streets twirling like
ballerinas in a dazzling and mesmerising dance.
and...

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  MAGDALENE : JEWEL OF JESUS 


She was the Chosen
a beckoned one
to ignite His speeches 
smooth it with her own
illustrious strength
‘Courage against Odds’
marked her inner Jewel 
 soft it lay cradled  
rhapsodic rubicon...

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As hapless vapors of decay, surround us, suffocating the fecund earth. A blanket of suffocating grey, born from the diseased aspirations of humanity. We, the self-appointed masters of a planet in shambles, gaze upon the...

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I often fail to notice
nuanced distinctions
between ethics of punishment,
retribution, on right hand
and boycott,
shunning revenge, on my left;

Between reigning down further abuse
and more quietly raining temporary neglect,
social 
economic
political distancing.

Punishment is a tool
for privileged narcissists,
win/lose competitors,
colonizers,
for fake-righteously...

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"Arrogance, a harmful disease,
                               ...

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From all worlds and time’s eternal outer reaches,
Where the Creator is perceived to dwell.
You try to learn what your told He teaches,
Regarding Life, the Universe, Heaven and Hell.

The soul is a precious, beautiful place,
Where you...

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I was in the shotgun seat
in 1960 Lansing Michigan
headed straight as a harddrive
through ghettoizing "Negra Section"
hunting down our commercial whitebread 
heavenly ThriftyAcres

Wanna be a WalMart ImPlantation
but not Southern enough,
somehow,
to withstand straight-male competition
in fluent White Privileged...

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                                  ...

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