Long Field Poems

Yours truly would never be confused for a gourmand, nevertheless I could enjoy experiencing taste testing select food samples if offered an opportunity of attending a fancy feast viz smörgåsbord, whereby oral indulgence would arouse,...

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I wrote this random rap song just yesterday! Have a blast, reading it! :D
"We shall all be like magnets,
Connecting to God's Laws in perfect symmetry 
We shall all shine as the sun,
Glorifying the son of...

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Humanity keeps looking forward, toward the coming of a birth,
and we’re all deemed as equals on our first day on this earth,
but as the years go quickly by our lives become our own;
we’re seen as...

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Verse 6: I've given up love countless times 
I needed to pay up for my heartbroken crimes
I already repented for my sins that made my high hopes paper-thin
Don't you feel that envy from deep within?...

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"Oak" 

The guardians
stood around and 
shook their heads

great thoughts 
quivering 
from the ground, roots up, 

as if to walk 
confidently 
with great armies

yet hesitation 
was witnessed
in their waving gestures

perplexed 
and touching 
green crowns, 

there they...

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Zen Death Haiku

Brittle cicada shell,
little did I know
you were my life!
—Shuho, translation by Michael R. Burch

Returning
as it came,
this naked worm.
—Shidoken, translation by Michael R. Burch

As dew glistens
on a lotus leaf,
so too I soon must vanish.
—Shinsui,...

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The emotional, mental and spiritual fallout courtesy Colt Gray

Apalachee High School,
located in Winder, Georgia
witnessed an active shooter,
whereby the alleged lone gunman
(actually just a teenager of fourteen years)
killed four people and injured nine more
the latter hospitalized with...

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Fahr an' Ice
by Michael R. Burch

From what I know of death, I'll side with those
who'd like to have a say in how it goes:
just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker),
and real fahr...

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"The Book of Changes"

Thoughts arrived before words,
1000s of years before
the crossing of curves

always seen to be 
swimming upstream 
against the current

thoughts … and feelings,
in the flow, always arrive 
before words, they are cast 

in the...

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Enola Gay

There on the ‘North Field’ tarmac of Tinian Island, Marianas;
Taxis the sleek designed ‘Boeing B-29 Superfortress’ to ready for take-off. 1
Glistening, polished aluminum under the blaring floodlights filmed for posterity,
Maneuvers' the ‘Enola Gay’, chosen...

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(In a Lush Garden Somewhere Out There)

The student stands where shifting sands of thought
Once firm with reason 
now elusive truths are sought.
Its splendor wanes 
a threadbare fading strand,
A quest for wisdom 
in this digital land.

Sage:...

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Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in...

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Nemesis, Confrontation And The Rejoined Battle,
Now Completed


(Nemesis) - Part One

O'lord of blight dare thee to now abide
Leaving thy abode to earthen realm ride
As punisher with dark universal might
As grief bearer, humanity to smite!

Dar'est thee enter,...

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The difference between 
bad-old-boy 
competitively evolving 
egg white privilege

And good-girl 
cooperatively revolutionary 
just-us-yolks

Foreshadows a symbiotic contrast
between prophetic performance
and messianic practice,
said Professor Glory
in her Gospel of Permaculture class,
one Friday morning
while sitting on her crass 
desk of...

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World's Longest Love Poem (second edition)


Title: My love my all

Edited by Izunna Okafor


Editor's Note:

Out of their ardency, eighteen poets and poetry lovers identified with the need to give the 2020 Valentine celebration a poetic taste...

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Enheduanna is the first writer we know by name. She created the first poetry anthology and hymnal, circa 2250 BC, in ancient Sumer. She was the daughter of King Saragon the Great. 

Lament to the...

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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...

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Medieval Poems



Deor's Lament (Anglo Saxon poem, circa 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland knew the agony of exile.
That indomitable smith was wracked by grief.
He endured countless troubles:
sorrows were his only companions
in his frozen...

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Alone I arrive, walking from Frederick
over the gaps, across gentle hills
out onto a knoll
overlooking this burnished landscape.
Before me I see countless writhing rows
of indiscernible shapes gathered
in terrible rituals mid fire and smoke
darkening the sun.
From distant...

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The Field
by Rumi 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Far beyond sermons of right and wrong there's a sunlit field. 
I'll meet you there. 
When the soul lazes in such lush grass 
the world is too...

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The title of this talk today,
"Win-Win Politics of New Feminist Economics"
suggests questions,
more than emasculating 
definitively deductive
reductive
answers.

Would you imagine
a minority-identified Buddhist,
more likely as a feminist?
or culturally comfortable
with political and economic Left-brain domination,
monotheistic competing for all-consuming
ritualistic servicing?

How...

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I know you invited the Brothers to side-line along,
but only if we are here to listen;
Don't speak.

Yet I may have credential for qualifying voice.
For I, like some of you,
know what it means to develop cooperative,
too...

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I.	  The Settlement

          Hickory bark bluffs
          at the blend of two 
    ...

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It was 1986 I was setting in after giving 
birth to my first son after wearing wires 
pregnant for the FBI buying large amounts 
of weapons ammunition boxes the dealer
loaded hand grenades silencers scopes gun...

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Conditions were harsh out in Kansas,
For the children and Sarah and Paul.
Neighbors and friends packed up and were gone;
Headed west they could hear fortune's call.
Never sure year to year of the harvest,
So their talents were...

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