#salad
A lot of people hate algebra - they think it isn't useful.
They are SO wrong - here's some practical Algebra:
Chocolate comes from Coca,
which grows on a tree,
which is a plant, therefore:
Chocolate is a salad.
You're welcome.
.
.
A song for this:
Preface (feat. Di Johnston) by The Shanghai Restoration Project
Feb 17
Feb 17, 2026 at 5:26 PM UTC
Act Won
Heroes said, a photo is coy...
Tell me another, a change of cunning
Into me, the seen, seem; is a shared deem, slow...
Act Too
Heroines lead, a seriouser work
Job's, wishes, sour notes in the rue
Of care callousness, to see the world irked...
Act Tree
Heiring salt, to a wish in the first place...
Sense and secret's, together to leave with me?
Is a whole, future, you see in the swallow of prayers?
Jan 22
Jan 22, 2026 at 6:05 PM UTC
What is Peace? I ask my Soul.
Is it the absence of conflict, Is it perfection?
The answer comes that it is not The conflict remains
But harmony prevails.
All need not be the same Create a salad
Not a stew.
The beauty of our Earth experience Is in bringing distant points together, Creating beauty, music, art and love.
It takes more than one To create a symphony.
It takes more than one to love.
And in loving all our distinctive and different selves,
The One that we become
Becomes Divine. Blessings of Peace,
Carol, 2011
Aug 15, 2025
Aug 15, 2025 at 3:49 AM UTC
mumbo giant jumbo,
combo pixel elixir,
rapid, vapid transit,
commute transmute,
****** deduce,
induce, profuse, refuse!
brain yowling, mewling,
scriven screwy, skewy,
left brain currently illogical,
right brain under left wing
tautological, combinatorial.
said thrice, devolved developed
case of purple thrush, thank god,
they're calling me to
to a lovely dinner
of word salad
and Lettuce Lady's
green goddess pasta
basta!=08
Jul 30, 2025
Jul 30, 2025 at 6:02 PM UTC
DRESSING
DRESSING DRESSING
DRESSING DRESSING DRESSING
DRESSING DRESSING DRESSING DRESSING DRESSING
DRESSING DRESSING DRESSING DRESSING DRESSING
steak cheese crouton steak cheese crouton steak cheese
crouton steak cheese crouton cheese steak crouton cheese
crouton steak cheese lettuce crouton steak cheese
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
BOWL BOWL BOWL BOWL BOWL BOWL
BOWL BOWL BOWL BOWL BOWL
BOWL BOWL BOWL BOWL
BOWL BOWL BOWL
Jul 2, 2025
Jul 2, 2025 at 12:10 PM UTC
Suddenly the plot sickens… Lurching out of a comatose state, the sudden onset of panic…left with a past that has never passed…was and is always present. At present, past and a past present, both distinctly different from the present prospect of the past degenerating already into a future prospect which will never be. Suffer that. Being prey to anxiety, nostalgia and hope…. to attain from time to time the absolute serenity of a perception of timelessness, a state of lack of perception of time; to fuse together some brief fragments of eternity, we can perceive on this side of life, through a glass darkly. Though eventually will perceive with crystal clarity, in sharp focus. Simulators. Emulators. I keep bumpin’ intae mysel. That’s just the point. Around the bend. It’s not the end. Sons of fear and sorrow, will you cheer tomorrow? Sons of toil and danger, will you serve a stranger? A new beginning, never ending. Still sometimes I feel so low that I want tae “top mysel.” But I will go on. God is ma strength. He is ma Salvation. The only Way, The Truth and The Life. Love. Always was and always will be. HE IS.
Feb 18, 2024
Feb 18, 2024 at 8:27 AM UTC
your beautiful words have awoken
taken from the very senses that prevented release
hindering the imagination laying in wait
finally, a well-deserved word salad has been served...
Brian Hill - 2020 # 132
May 12, 2020
May 12, 2020 at 9:13 AM UTC
Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch
(dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.)
I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone,
talking about poke salat—
how easy it was to find if you knew where to seek it ...
standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green,
straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches,
crowding out the less-hardy nettles.
“Nobody knows that it’s there, lad, or that it’s fit tuh eat
with some bacon drippin’s or lard.”
“Don’t eat the berries. You see—the berry’s no good.
And you’d hav’ta wash the leaves a good long time.”
“I’d boil it twice, less’n I wus in a hurry.
Lawd, it’s tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst.”
He seldom was hurried; I can see him still ...
silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight,
stooped, but with a tall man’s angular gray grace.
Sometimes he’d pause to watch me running across the yard,
trampling his beans,
dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants.
He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression.
Years later I found the proper name—“pokeweed”—while perusing a dictionary.
Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a ****
I still can hear his laconic reply ...
“Well, chile, s’m’times them times wus hard.”
Published by Lonzie’s Fried Chicken, Grassroots Poetry, Poet’s Forum Magazine, Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, A Flasher’s Dozen (prose version), Poetry Life & Times, Centrifugal Eye, Better Than Starbucks. Keywords/Tags: Great Depression, South, father, grandfather, son, grandson, memory, memories, flowers, nettles, **** weeds, pokeweed, poke salad, poke salat, bacon, lard, front porch swing, sweat bees, green, greens, beans, forage, foraging
Playthings
by Michael R. Burch
a sequel to “Playmates”
There was a time, as though a long-forgotten dream remembered,
when you and I were playmates and the days were long;
then we were pirates stealing plaits of daisies
from trembling maidens fearing men so strong . . .
Our world was like an unplucked Rose unfolding,
and you and I were busy, then, as bees;
the nectar that we drank, it made us giddy;
each petal within reach seemed ours to seize . . .
But you were more the doer, I the dreamer,
so I wrote poems and dreamed a noble cause;
while you were linking logs, I met old Merlin
and took a dizzy ride to faery Oz . . .
Then it came to pass you had no time for playthings,
for with strong hands you built, with bricks and stone,
tall buildings, then a life, and then you married.
Now my fantasies, again, are all my own.
This is a companion poem to “Playmates,” the second poem I remember writing, around age 13 or 14. However, I believe “Playthings” was written several years later, in my late teens, around 1977. According to my notes, I revised the poem in 1991, then again in 2020.
Abide
by Michael R. Burch
after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"
It is hard to understand or accept mortality—
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea
boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle
than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists
simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.
And so we abide . . .
even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink,
it is best not to drink
(or, drinking, certainly not to think).
Originally published by Light Quarterly
Observance
by Michael R. Burch
Here the hills are old and rolling
casually in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . .
By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have known the years to pass
almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . .
For here the valleys fill with sunlight
to the brim, then empty again,
and it seems that only I notice
how the years flood out, and in . . .
This is an early poem that made me feel like a “real poet.” I remember writing it in the break room of the McDonald's where I worked as a high school student. I believe that was at age 17. "Observance" was originally published by Nebo as "Reckoning." It was later published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Verses, Romantics Quarterly, Setu (India), Better Than Starburcks, The Chained Muse, Formal Verse, the anthology There is Something in the Autumn and Poetry Life & Times. That’s not too shabby for a teen poet!
Ivy
by Michael R. Burch
“Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” — Pablo Neruda
“They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”
Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.
Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.
Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.
The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch
There was a moment
without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
felt more than seen.
I was eighteen,
my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.
There was an instant . . .
without words, but with a deeper communion,
as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
liquidly our lips met
—feverish, wet—
forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.
Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.
This is one of my early poems but I can’t remember exactly when I wrote it. Due to the romantic style, I believe it was probably written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time.
Moments
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.
There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.
Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Grassroots Poetry, The Chained Muse, in a Soundcloud reading by Vex Darkly, in a YouTube reading by Jasper Sole, and in a Romanian translation by Petru Dimofte
Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch
Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.
There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times
Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch
I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
swirling together through Himalayan serene altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhaled breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness . . .
But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!
We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter there will be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.
Fledglings
by Michael R. Burch
With her small eyes, pale and unforgiving,
she taught me—December is not for those
unweaned of love, the chirping nestlings
who bicker for worms with dramatic throats
still pinkly exposed, who have not yet learned
the first harsh lesson of survival: to devour
their weaker siblings in the high-leafed ferned
fortress and impregnable bower
from which men must fly like improbable dreams
to become poets. They have yet to learn that,
before they can soar starward, like fanciful archaic machines,
they must first assimilate the latest technology, or
lose all in the sudden realization of gravity,
following Icarus’s, sun-unwinged, singed trajectory.
The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch
Whatever we became climbed on the thought
of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings
ten thousand miles above the breasted earth
that had vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ...
I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling
my human form about; I writhe; I writhe.
Invention is not Mastery, nor wings
Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides
and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ...
Oh, some will call the sun my doom, but Love
melts callow wax the higher atmospheres
leave brittle. I flew high: not high enough
to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers.
Retro
by Michael R. Burch
Now, once again,
love’s a redundant pleasure,
as we laugh
at my childish fumblings
through the acres of your dress,
past your wily-wired brassiere,
through your ******* pink billows
of thrill-piqued frills ...
Till I lay once again—panting redfaced
at your gayest lack of resistance,
and, later, at your milktongued
mewlings in the dark ...
When you were virginal,
sweet as eucalyptus,
we did not understand
the miracle of repentance,
and I took for granted
your obsessive distance ...
But now I am happily unbuttoning
that chaste dress,
unhitching that firm-latched bra,
tugging at those parachute-like *******
the ones you would have gladly forgotten
had I not bought them in this year’s size.
Originally published by Erosha
Mar 26, 2020
Mar 26, 2020 at 3:30 AM UTC
Cuckqueen
in a kink clutch
breaking a twisted angel
on the rack of
onward Christian solders
in ecstatic flagellations
for ***** saliva cliterature
with a mouth black window widows bite
in a white lie light
of cruel dark night
while jazz ****
layonaise spatters
where its soft and hurts good
and fossil **** *******
drive down the armageddon highway
in a bright burn
with ***** feet on clean sheets
and drooling tongues
lickalotapuss
Mar 17, 2019
Mar 17, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
Felling rusty crusty spoons
And nettles upon my *******
I speak to my cohort
Hubert cumberdale
It's almost ******** I say
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 12:56 AM UTC
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Which fruit is the juiciest of all.
Round and oval,
With a green crown and a red mantle,
A rainbow of colours! Red,
orange, yellow,green and purple,
Big and small,
Tomatoes are juiciest of all.
The redder, the better,
More healthier.
Full of tiny seeds,
What, a delicious curry needs.
Used as veggies,
A fruit it is.
Tomatoes a day,
Keeps the risk of heart disease away.
Full of vitamins C and K,potassium and folate,
Helps against cancer like prostrate.
Pick them fresh at a go,
Have a feast on this tomato,
Barbeque chicken and chips with salad and sauce of tomatoes,
Dissipates all your woes.
Jun 22, 2018
Jun 22, 2018 at 4:03 AM UTC
The beginning of this
Break.
–Down
At its foundation
Fulfilling and self-reflective, and
Rousing and neurotic and bright
And perilous
–a fever-dream
¬¬¬
Shadows that have stopped forming,
Dead
All
The mornings are dead
The passion is dead
The feeling of the back of my neck –tiny hairs
All
Dead
That human side has halted
The “I-feel-like-a-pussy-but-” thoughts, gone
All dreams
All barren, with less than profound meaning
******* dead, behind the wheel.
Car trapped
Inside of a sad self-absorption
A frozen-inlet, a fissure in the glass-jar
Road paved with the litter of the late
Night, bug-eyed witless carbon copy Phish fan
Grave yard shift –stick worn-down-brain
Lazily-littered, empty-shell of a
Bottle flung, down to the pavement
Down, into the gutter
Down, into sewer
Which sweeps, down into the **** Heavens
And sits
Down, endlessly
Dreaming only to return
Into life
The insanity
The heartbreak
The fears
The passions
The talent
The jokes
The sickness
The *******
Where it all starts
Where it all eventually sleeps
Where all of this **** came full circle
Where the mind can return
Where the body can lay,
Down
At the beginning of this.
Break.
–Down
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 7:14 PM UTC
*I close my eyes above my salad
Nobody here can see
Praying that God would keep her well
And take care of her
Be it well away from me*
Jan 17, 2017
Jan 17, 2017 at 8:35 PM UTC
His mother was suicidal
His father was patricidal
His siblings all fratricidal
They fractured his parietal.
His acumen was impractical
While his mien was didactical
His morals were retractible
And his religion was heretical.
He longed to be a celebrity
And wished for its celerity
To skip the serendipity
And fork over his luminosity.
But it seems that synchronicity
Paired up with idiosyncrasy
In a natural form of complicity
And waylaid him with complicity.
He moaned that he was qualified
And not the least bit mollified
To be so soundly criticized
That they could not recognize
By those who were so glassy eyed
A plenipotentiary, very wise
Who appears before their very eyes
Who they would gladly plagiarize
Even while they ostracize.
He can’t achieve equanimity
When so many hold their enmity
And treat him so outrageously
In ignoring his magnanimity.
After all, is there anyone living
Who is so astoundingly forgiving
Than he by the simple act of giving
And letting them go on living?
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 8:02 PM UTC
I can't see you.
I can't protect you.
Burning in your curiosity.
Huffing another smoke, unrelenting.
You don't understand the dream sugar.
What you want, is something important.
Something covered in whipped cream and bbq sauce.
Exactly, me.
Or not.
You see, I'm just a voice in my head.
Burning brownies baked with bread.
You don't like brownies and bread? Well go to hell.
They're my brownies.
Mine, something you can't claim because you have nothing.
No one, No idea and no value to anything.
You value your brain and **** it for not being enough.
Poison your body for not being able to take the strain of life.
Burn your cigarette to take away the pain of being alone.
Striking your soul, praying you never have to atone.
Cologne rhymes with alone you know. Funny coincidence right?
Brain power. Stained flower.
Hope and happiness. Dope and sadness.
Perception. Deception.
Search for
Purpose.
Not whats on the
Surface.
Oh my elusive friend, trying to take the pain away.
The point of life is not to avoid but to minimize.
Like the Japanese!
A child looks for purpose.
An adult works towards it.
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 3:09 AM UTC
Sometimes I hate the whether.
I don’t know whether I should have a salad or eat a steak.
Where’s a meatierologist when you need one?
Jun 15, 2015
Jun 15, 2015 at 3:47 PM UTC
I was lost when you found me,
then I got loster.
May 28, 2015
May 28, 2015 at 4:27 PM UTC
Have you ever been asked if you wanted something?
for water,dessert,money,cloths or for a session of adventuring,
or cheese.
Did you reply yes with glee
or reply no with ease?
how would you reply to cheese?
You reply a yes with joy
but then they employ
that what you wanted isn't there,
you feel as though you have been led astray
led to a depressing day,
they said they had cheese.
but the cheese was not there
for your salad was left bare.
how could this happen to you!?
All you wanted was cheese
its simple you see
that is all you wanted...
They didn't have cheese for my salad
such actions are not valid
my poor salad.
:(
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 12:49 AM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
Wouldn't cross my mind,
I saw you fall out of the sky,
Crash landed,
Deep in the earth and,
I though you died,
You had a properly set burial,
We can almost see just what you're like,
I nearly cried,
I,
Looking so peaceful,
And peacefully crafted,
I could've loved your bits and pieces,
Of cut chicken in ceaser salads,
But I just thought that you would see,
My worth,
And for what its worth,
Just to see you rise from the dirt,
Passion fades,
But loves a curse,
And everything you did,
Was so supurb,
Like flavor in herbs,
But I'm just really glad you saw the concept,
In the sky and the stars,
But others are deceased,
This ain't a contest,
Monkey bars.
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 11:52 PM UTC
*The vividest viridian, the variety,
An orange vinaigrette,
Vexes her.*
© 2015 J.S.P.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 5:03 PM UTC