SPARROWS ARE CHIPPING
I've known for a long time. They are no longer looking for or inviting to the acid shower of love and friendship. Among the scurrying creatures, the memories of the homely past became a shadow. The sediment of a life that says nothing can get stuck inside at any time, and the distorted apple-coil handshakes and calculating promises are only good for someone to understand: mud-slinging is going on here at all levels.
Huge, aching blindness is a useless fate even for faces that constantly want to ask. Unanswered, the decaying city flings itself, jumps, and tumbles among lofty wrecks and pseudo-prophets resplendent in its shortcomings.
The tired forehead squeezes out pain, but also a dull indifference. From here on down, it's quite difficult to continue, because those who take it upon themselves to release their Golgotha-torment boldly end up dead-white in the noise of some deserted street.
Insultingly loud gasps are still heard wh...
MEASUREMENT ILLUSIONS
No matter where he goes on this wide Earth, the vulnerable Man can only rarely find his home; his rediscovered search for his inner Peace of Mind is now even more important and would be more essential than the approximate certainty that he can be easily and efficiently evicted from his intimate, comfortable studio apartment.
As soon as the wide range of opportunities intended for the exceptional stray even an inch into the taboo-forbidden, the mass-man rather puts up with the complex confusion, saying; it can rarely, if ever, change its mundane, insidious connections with independent will. Tolerance locked in self-discipline will measure the boundaries for many, many decades to come. How long should we necessarily wait for the favorable moment, the cosmic alignment of planets, in order to be able to guarantee the whole solvable puzzle of sincere feelings, immortal romances and loves?!
So that couples don't just play with each other to their h...
LET’S MAKE A DEAL
Dweller and Mouse
Together in the same house
The Mouse wanted to make a deal
The Dweller’s response, Are you for real?
The Mouse was going to move in
Not this house
The Dweller shouted abruptly, “Get Out”
Get to Mouse stepping
Go back to Disneyworld
This house will be no Magic Kingdom
Now get out
The Mouse gave the Dweller an Ultimatum
The Mouse loss
The Dweller used force
Mouse track set
Had the effect
The Mouse died
Just like that
No Deal
...Possible contradictions
In this strange, disgraced world, I hardly know anyone anymore. And it doesn't matter whether the person I call my friend or my beloved is with me or against me.
I can't stand idly by in this society that apes the minute stars to the core, where every inquisitional curse, discarded, betrayed sly-emotion can swallow my person, and all cursed, blood-steamed swearing falls on my head - if necessary or not.
Because I am whipped daily by the executioners of hateful, obscene comments, who almost like an artist with the compromising marks of profanity. And in vain my diploma adorns the dark solitude of my drawer; testifying that I was once a learned man. And even though many wounded souls are full of words of love, if I fight with stupid, low-style jerks and scumbags in socially hateful rants, and all deafened deaf ears and lazy wills are simultaneously blocked by lying gibberish, scheming, and lousy promises.
This is foreign to t...
ENVIOUS DISORDER
It is the conscious Nothingness of gravity that constantly pulls its victims who have begun to fall towards it. Perhaps even in the eyes of the stars, the quiet Everything should be evaluated and interpreted differently. In the inner telescope of the Spirit, we necessarily miss something in every action and movement, just like in the sets of unspoken compliments.
It is mere pretense, or just an effective manipulative trick, with which the superficial way of life sometimes still tempts and promises. - In the transition between the two, a shaky, half-awake tightrope walker balances thinly, who can only hope that by adjusting his efforts to his misfortune, he can bring the dangerous situation that yawns at him to his knees. It would not hurt common sense to always consider and consider chains of confusing and sufficiently complicated connections.
Now they are still trampling on each other, because just like empathy-tolerance - solidarity has increas...
The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (HM-3)
The poems that follow are dedicated to my wife Beth, my son Jeremy, my mother, Christine Ena Burch, and other members of our extended family. The final poems are dedicated to my Muse.
She Gathered Lilacs
for Beth
She gathered lilacs
and arrayed them in her hair;
tonight, she taught the wind to be free.
She kept her secrets
in a silver locket;
her companions were starlight and mystery.
She danced all night
to the beat of her heart;
with her tears she imbued the sea.
She hid her despair
in a crystal jar,
and never revealed it to me.
She kept her distance
as though it were armor;
gauntlet thorns guard her heart like the rose.
Love!—awaken, awaken<...
The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (HM-2)
These are the best poem of my own choosing, in the second Honorable Mention category (HM-2).
Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The obscuring mirror of my era
broke
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters monopolized its maze.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.
Pan
by Michael R. Burch
... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...
... Once there were paths that led to ...
The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (HM-1)
These are poems I picked myself that were not ranked by Google. I will call this collection Honorable Mention-1.
Sex Hex
by Michael R. Burch
Love’s full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes).
A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My rhyming paraphrase of an Albert Einstein quote at one time had 34K Google results and has been merchandised on t-shirts and coffee mugs. My tweet of the rhyme was retweeted by Pharrell Williams; it was then retweeted by Twitter users another 2.1K times. The rhyme has been incorrectly attributed to Einstein.
While you decline to...
The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (26-50)
These are the Best Poems of Michael R. Burch according to Google, #26 to #50.
Ordinary Love (#26)
by Michael R. Burch
Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way
and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.
Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.
Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say
we're older now, that &q...
The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (1-25)
These are the Best Poems of Michael R. Burch in his own opinion and in Google's, with some differences of opinion here and there.
I let Google pick the first 50 poems by using the searches: "Michael R. Burch most popular poems" and "Michael R. Burch best poems." There are a number of ties because Google has changed its ratings of my poems from time to time. These are my best and/or my most popular poems according to Google...
Epitaph for a Homeless Child (#1 tie)
by Michael R. Burch
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
Over the years this poem has been published with a number of different titles. It began as a Holocaust poem with the title "Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust." When I became a peace activist and the author of a peace plan for Israel/Pales...