I come from a musical place
Where they shoot me for my song
And my brother has been tortured
By my brother in my land.
I come from a beautiful place
Where they hate my shade of skin
They don't like the way I pray
And they ban free poetry.
......
Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep
Preaching follow me
Like yu is blind sheep,
Dis poetry is not Party Political
Not designed fe dose who are critical.
Dis poetry is wid me when I gu to me bed
......
It is my hope and dream
To hook up through the satellites
With everyone that's in the Family
Red and Blue, Green, Gold and Yellow
All the girls that are in jail with me
That gave their lives, took their lives
Gave their lives again
This is on the other side of the noose
That hangs in the sky
......
As for poets
The Earth Poets
Who write small poems,
Need help from no man.
The Air Poets
Play out the swiftest gales
And sometimes loll in the eddies.
Poem after poem,
Curling back on the same thrust.
......
i’ve never told a story
someone else had never heard
i’ve never wrote a book
because i couldn’t find the words
i’ve scratched out all the words
on the pages that i wrote
i’ve drowned letters in the water
and i’ve thrown them off of the boat
......
i’ve never told a story
someone else had never heard
i’ve never wrote a book
because i couldn’t find the words
i’ve scratched out all the words
on the pages that i wrote
i’ve drowned letters in the water
and i’ve thrown them off of the boat
......
Mrs. Holloway polishes her poetry dimly,
Regaling herself with the accoutrements of
Selected poetry, cluttered and less jinxed
By way of satanic slamming by famished,
Idle critics who read The New York Times
Just once in a sugared year.
She chooses her stanzas locally.
By that I mean her stanzas nurse patience,
Drifting from gossips to loose, impotent
Talks held when midnights ail.
......
Bitter winter return of the bleeding dream supplies mountains licking knives as an abyss eats, talks, mashes, and burns crashing symbols.
Time sounds like a searing sky…
Her love’s tender disgrace multiplies lies by flies fucking in a window sill sculpted within nightmares reaping and repeating as Yaldaboath rapes Sofia a sunburst sky seizure drizzling fall
Slowly a butterfly flits in noon’s hyacinth cry…
Numb burrs in her saddle riding hard tonight rocking rolling in her shack til dawn screams light
......
Poems about Poets
Poems for Poets
Scattershot
by Michael R. Burch
for Anaïs Vionet
......
The Ex-Prez Sex
by Michael R. Burch
The prez should be above the law, he sez,
even though he’s no longer prez.
Jim Crow Pie
by Michael R. Burch
......