Long Migration Poems

Dusk-gliding swallow, 
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers! 
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A bee emerging
from deep within the peony's hairy recesses
flies off, sated
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

That dying cricket,...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems V - Ber Horvitz, Yitzkhak Viner, Franta Bass

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes....

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Various Heresies 4

I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse?a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard?a Voice,
a Voice that called me from...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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The Alaskan Oil Pipeline

Nineteen sixty-eight confirmed the year
Of discovery by ‘Humble Oil’
To North America’s largest oil field,
On the North Slope of the Brooks Range;
A west to east Northern Alaskan mountain chain.
An area forty miles wide...

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Lost dexterity since fingers tap away at qwerty keyboard...

since being a student in grade, junior and high school
analogous to geometry proof how lack of use proves
quite aware that finger muscles atrophied
veering off on a tangent...

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But we of the Three Tribes live undiscovered 
   In the reverberating stillness of the 
 Three Gorges...
And are therefore unknown to the warring mongol;
    His impassioned lusts -- his...

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someone always told me this with tears in her eyes...


(for Lata Sethi's late-mother, who was my mother’s ‘sister’ and who took us all into her heart, and for Lata and Ravi Sethi of Defence Colony,...

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The Conditions of Living

Stark organisations of my observations
Respond to beauty with pure elation 
Instead of chronic devastation 
Process the abject consternation 
From contrived over-saturation 
And acute mass manipulation 
That should be in legal confiscation
Truth found...

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Don’t look at me
As though I am an alien or a stranger,
Don’t let the dagger of antipathy
Fly out of your eyes.

I am your neighbor.

Don’t call me a foe, an antagonist, or a rival,
Don’t roll up...

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Sometimes faith lives on the edge of a knife
as Sviastoslav the Rus sacker came to know 
The Khazar Khanate knew how to cut a slight
his gilded skull stole the show,
The Vatican went from a marsh...

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One way of seeing interdependent relationship
between human nature
and all Earth's natural organisms and systems
is as historic waves of immigrant colonizing populations
spreading out across all unfrozen continents.

To gradually, naturally and spiritually,
over several generations,
become reborn transformed immigrants,
now...

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I was listening, last night,
to a sympathetic defense
for conserving liberal arts
and producing deeper and wider liberating sciences
including healthy democratic
politically empowering science.

Once again
I am hearing about the persuasive prominence of identity,
how we label our ego-political selves,
as...

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Most, including myself,  have thought upon a certain night                         ...

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flying over Gulf of Mexico
                              ...

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Awaking blithe each morning,
with eyes upon the World,
I wonder, are we mourning
with ebon flags unfurled –
or are they but a warning,
some draped like snakes and curled,
stray stars and stripes adorning,
sent from the netherworld.

I wander through...

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skinny island rump
  highway seas churning the horizon under turbulent skies
  entity England
  migration waves still grounding along the continental shelf
  monarchs, priests and lords
  relaunching history and hope, the...

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It was like a whisper- 
My wife delivered the sad news- 
"Your grandfather was dead."- 
And so he was- 
Her eyes was awfully sad- 
Touched me gently on my back- 
He was old- 
The time...

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As Exodus tells his story,
Moses was compelled by God
and then invited,
commissioned by inside/outside Voice,
and bv voices of Israel's extended EarthTribes
to lead them through forty desert years
of sometimes nomadic wins
and mostly immigrating losses
in a competitively shared...

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When anarchy consumes a barren soul,
the hatred overwhelms the beating heart.
It sickens minds and steals the body whole  
then rips the cloth of empathy apart.
Existence lies between what evil craves
and what your world may...

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Perhaps immigration is our big US national anxiety
because we don't know how to unilaterally abort
cancerous growth of matricide.

Too much to even think about
at a merely nationalistic level
of ecocidal unconsciousness.

Earth is our shared sacred home
which has...

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across the Doggerland dogged people trudge
  Neanderthals, Heidelbergers...Sapiens, the last ones standing
  hairy mammoths, heavy life bearing down
  the mighty maw of an ice wall crunches, enforcing southward retreat
  remoulding the...

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Searching outside of myself
Far and wide
Looking into the eyes and souls of others
Seeking answers 
Looking for my missing part
Always sensing an absence

Awakening one day with tears in my eyes
A complete realization
I had found my missing...

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You can tell when something is over, you can see it flying over your shoulder; you can tell when something is over, there are just something’s that you cannot do over. You bend and you...

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I'm in bondage, is this a dream
I'm governed by extremes
Let's leave this land of tyranny
Oh, let us run away
Escape on to a new land of liberty
"people who survive war and escape tyranny"

Despotism, absolute power, autocracy,
Dictatorship,...

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