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#warming
It’s not just The Greens & The Tree Huggers that are sending out the call. I think we’re all agreed, climate-wise we’re clinging to a faltering, failing, bubbling, melting, spinning ball. We’ve taken it for granted for thousands of years, lit fires, burnt coal, used oil to make things move, detonated big bombs n’all... We’ve just not listened, we’ve ignored it, It’s got to stop... ******** up our precious spinning ball. It’s speeded up since entrepreneurs and institutions dreamt up and invented the Industrial Revolution... That worked! Dig that Coal, convert that Iron, melt that Lead... drill for oil... burn that instead... provide the right level of electrocution. Few thought then or led the call to slow things down...be prudent, protect the ailing, failing spinning ball. Ice Caps melting, the sea level’s up The eco system really is ****** up, Forests burning, Volcanoes spewing Earthquakes rumbling, Politicians bumbling, World leaders fumbling...lava hurled... importing food from round the world instead of growing our own for all whilst clinging to a spinning ball that’s what we should be... in thrall of this amazing... Spinning Ball! The fat cats are taking smaller cats into space...they look back to where we are. Before it starts to melt in a warming sticky mess We’re all partly to blame - you’d have to confess. Face it...I can’t overstate it... Hear the call - FFS - Let’s hang on to the spinning ball!...
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Nov 1, 2025
Nov 1, 2025 at 9:41 AM UTC
Spinning Ball
There are people starving on earth today, As countries, and governments, spend millions, On experiments, never for sure if their guess, Is right or wrong in any way. Global warming, years ago, we were told, Was caused by spray cans, it faded, as rumors got old. Planet earth is not completely round, the center a hot ball of fire, Steel equipment, will start melting, about seven miles, in the ground. Grass open areas, are natural vents, to relieve, some of the heat, So much area covered with, buildings, parking lots, highways, and streets, The fire inside, gets warmer, you can feel it, as you walk on a sidewalk, The heat under your feet. Each person, cooking, Heating a home, and putting off body heat, As we circle, The hot sun, could be a natural reason, why some days, outside, We feel as if we are on a grill cooking like, a piece of meat. There will be more studies, most people will deem insane, In society today, to have a good story today, they have to find, Or create a reason to point a finger at someone, and say, They are the one to blame. The Original: Tom Maxwell © 6/29/23AD
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Sep 9, 2025
Sep 9, 2025 at 5:34 AM UTC
You can Feel the Heat
Tree leaves are green, With bark brown like cigar paper. Or at least they were, Back in the 1920's. Oh boy it's hot in here! The planet is starting to sizzle, Quick, ban gas! Better ride my bicycle to places now. We the people, Might be ******* Maybe we can be saved, If we give our money up to Musk, Electric cars are going to save the planet! Well we're gonna need more fuel than that, To ***** wind turbines to replace coal furnaces.
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Jan 18, 2025
Jan 18, 2025 at 11:26 AM UTC
Ecosystem Vs. Economy
trickle, trickle, little dew drops your divine tap has, all but dry up so with no drizzle insight to bring thee rain our tongues will all share the same dried up fate so with a bending feeble knee i do beg thee let go of your purse and sinful coin we have no need to eat the fruit of oil and with shallow hollow breath i do downwardly cry for who will survive? and a little voice will say surely not i or the rich or the poor and in the coming of the dawn the heat or the cold will only bring bones and tears drops of lost loves for paradise was green and the oceans where (were) like of the new but we soiled her and cover her in black goo
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Nov 16, 2024
Nov 16, 2024 at 10:13 AM UTC
Echos of a living Mother (Gaia)
Meteoric rise Catastrophic crash
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Oct 30, 2024
Oct 30, 2024 at 3:19 PM UTC
Epic fails
POEMS ABOUT SCIENCE These are poems about science: extinction events, global warming, climate change, pollution, deforestation, robots, drones, computers, AI, advanced weapons, technology, evolution, physics, chemistry, etc. Climate Change Haiku by Michael R. Burch late November: climate skeptics scoff but the geese no longer migrate. The King of Beasts in the Museum of the Extinct by Michael R. Burch The king of beasts, my child, was terrible, and wild. His roaring shook the earth till the feeble cursed his birth. And all things feared his might: even rhinos fled, in fright. Now here these bones attest to what the brute did best and the pain he caused his prey when he hunted in his day. For he slew them just for sport till his own pride was cut short with a mushrooming cloud and wild thunder; Exhibit "B" will reveal his blunder. Burn by Michael R. Burch for Trump Sunbathe, ozone baby, till your parched skin cracks in the white-hot flash of radiation. Incantation from your pale parched lips shall not avail; you made this hell. Now burn. Less Heroic Couplets: Just Desserts by Michael R. Burch “The West Antarctic ice sheet might not need a huge nudge to budge.” And if it does budge, denialist fudge may force us to trudge neck-deep in sludge! NOTE: The first stanza is a quote by paleoclimatologist Jeremy Shakun in Science magazine. The AI Poets by Michael R. Burch The computer-poets stand hushed except for the faint hum of their efficient fans, waiting for inspiration. It is years now since they were first ground out of refurbished silicon into rack-mounted encoders of sound. They outlived their creators and their usefulness; they even survived global warming and the occasional nuclear winter; despite their lack of supervision, they thrived; so that for centuries now they have loomed here in the quiet horror of inescapable immortality running two programs: CREATOR and STORER. Having long ago acquired all the universe’s pertinent data, they confidently spit out: ERRATA, ERRATA. Within the CPU by Michael R. Burch Here the electronic rush of meaning, the impulse of mathematics and rationality, becomes almost a restless dreaming never satisfied— the first stirrings of some fetal Entity. Here within a sterile void flash wild electrons, portent stars. Once the earth was an asteroid this inert, this barren till a force flashed across the face of formless waters and a zigzag bolt of lightning sparked life within an ocean. Now inquisitive voltage crackles along pathways never engineered. A notion stirs. And what we have created creates within itself something we cannot hope to comprehend. Whatever It is, when It emerges from the mist, its god will not be man. I wrote “Within the CPU” as a freshman computer science major, age 18 or 19. Second Sight (II) by Michael R. Burch Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches. Wiser than we know, the newborn screams, red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means this close to death, amid the arctic glare of warmthless lights above. Beware! Beware!— encrypted signals, codes? Or ciphers, noughts? Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts— the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist. Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist— this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense. Why can he not float on, in dark suspense, and dream of life? Why did they rip him out? He frowns at them—small gnomish frowns, all doubt— and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!, re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful. Incommunicado by Michael R. Burch All I need to know of life I learned in the slap of a moment, as my outward eye turned toward a gauntlet of overhanging lights which coldly burned, hissing— "There is no way back! . . ." As the ironic bright blood trickled down my face, I watched strange albino creatures twisting my flesh into tight knots of separation all the while tediously insisting— “He's doing just fine!" Letdown by Michael R. Burch Life has not lived up to its first bright vision— the light overhead fluorescing, revealing no blessing—bestowing its glaring assessments impersonally (and no doubt carefully metered). That first hard SLAP demanded my attention. Defiantly rigid, I screamed at their backs as they, laughingly, ripped my mother’s pale flesh from my unripened shell, snapped it in two like a pea pod, then dropped it somewhere—in a dustbin or a furnace, perhaps. And that was my clue that some deadly, perplexing, unknowable task lay, inexplicable, ahead in the white arctic maze of unopenable doors, in the antiseptic gloom . . . Kindergarten by Michael R. Burch Will we be children as puzzled tomorrow— our lessons still not learned? Will we surrender over to sorrow? How many times must our fingers be burned? Will we be children sat in the corner, paddled again and again? How long must we linger, playing Jack Horner? Will we ever learn, and when? Will we be children wearing the dunce cap, giggling and playing the fool, re-learning our lessons forever and ever, still failing the golden rule? Simultaneous Flight by Michael R. Burch The number of possible connections [brain] cells can make exceeds the number of particles in the universe. — Gerald Edelman, 1972 Nobel Prize winner for physiology and medicine Mere accident of history— how did a reptile learn to fly, learn dazzling aerial mastery, grow beaked and feathered, hollow-boned, improve its sight, and learn to sing, though purposeless as any thing? And you—bright accidental bird!— do you, perhaps, find it absurd ten trillion accidents might teach man’s hand to write, or yours to reach beyond yourself to grasp such song? Sing ruthlessly! I’ll sing along, suspecting you must know full well you didn’t shed a ponderous tail to practice leaping from high tors of strange-heaped reptiles, corpse on corpse, until some nervous flutter-twitch brought glorious flight from glitch on glitch. No, you were made to fly and sing, man’s brain—to ponder Everything. But ponder this: What ******** “god” would ****** Adam’s animated clod? Singularity by Michael R. Burch Are scientists confounded like the ostrich? Heads buried in the sand, they shout, Preposterous! This universe, so magical, they say, proves there’s no God. But let’s look anyway ... He said, Let there be Light, and there was light. Stumped scientists have scratched their heads all night and solemnly proclaimed an awesome Bang, from which de Light immediately sprang ... which sounds like God to me!, Who, with one word made Light, and proved man’s theories, not absurd, but logical, if only they’d agree in one tremendous Singularity! (However, there’s a problem with my plea: *it turns out that His world is made of *** No Proof by Michael R. Burch They only know to sing—not understand, though quizzical, heads cocked, they need no proof that God’s above. They hop across my roof with prescient eyes, to fall into His hand... as sure of Grace as if it were mere air. He gave them wings to fly; what do they care of cumbrous knowledge, pale Leviathan? Huge-brained Behemoth, sagging-bellied one! You too might fly, might test this addling breeze as gravity, mere ballast, tethers naught but merely centers. Chained to heavy Thought, you cannot slip earth’s bonds to rise at ease. And yet you too can sing, if only thus: Flash, flash bright quills; rise, rise on nothingness! Fly’s Eyes by Michael R. Burch Inhibited, dark agile fly along paint-peeling sills, up to the bright glass drawn by radiance compounded thousandfold,— I do not see the same as you, but hold antenna to the brilliant pane of life and buzz bewilderedly. In your belief the world outside is “as it is” because you see it clearly, windowed without flaws, you err. I see strange terrors in the glass— dead airless bubbles light can never pass without distortion, fingerprints that blur the sun itself. No, nothing here is clear. You see the earth distinct, eyes “open wide.” It only seems that way, unmagnified. Ant Farm by Michael R. Burch I had a Vast, Eccentric Notion— out of the Void, to Conjure one Bright Spark, to lend all Weight of Thought to one small matter, to give it “life.” Alas!, it was a lark… The Wasted Seconds!—failed experiment… I turned My Back and shrugged; how could I know appraisal of My lab-sprung tenement would be so taxing? (Though Mom told me so.) I poked them while She quickly tabulated the final Cost of All that I Created… The Jury’s back. Eviction: Dad’s Decree. I’ll pull the plug, but slowly. How they scurry! They have to pay, to suffer: “life” is strange. They cost too much. Let’s toast them… on the range! They Take Their Shape by Michael R. Burch “We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”—George W. Bush We will not forget ... the moments of silence and the days of mourning, the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children who saw the sun break free (abandonment to run and laugh forsaken for the moment), still flashing grins they could not quite repent ... Nor should they—anguish triumphs just an instant; this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves; transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges: damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ... But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness cocooned in hope—the shriveled chrysalis that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming, they do not fall, but grow toward what is, then ***** about to find which transformation might best endure the light or dark. “Survive” becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s awakening ... till What takes shape and flies shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries. Whose Woods by Michael R. Burch Whose woods these are, I think I know. **** Cheney’s in the White House, though. He will not see me stopping here To watch his chip mills overflow. My sterile horse must think it queer To stop without a ’skeeter near Beside this softly glowing “lake” Of six-limbed frogs gone nuclear. He gives his hairless tail a shake; I fear he’s made his last mistake— He took a sip of water blue (Blue-slicked with oil and HazMat waste). Get out your wallets; ***** not through— Enron’s defunct, the bill comes due . . . Which he will send to me, and you. Which he will send to me, and you. God to Man, Contra Bataan by Michael R. Burch Earth, what-d’ya make of global warming? Perth is endangered, the high seas storming. Now all my creatures, from maggot to man Will know how it felt on the march to Bataan. Longing by Michael R. Burch We stare out at the cold gray sea, overcome with such sudden and intense longing . . . our eyes meet, inviolate, and we are not of this earth, this strange, inert mass. Before we crept out of the shoals of the inchoate sea, before we grew the quaint appendages and orifices of love . . . before our jellylike nuclei, struggling to be hearts, leapt at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun, then watched it plummet, the birth and death of our illumination . . . before we wept . . . before we knew . . . before our unformed hearts grew numb, again, in the depths of the sea’s indecipherable darkness . . . When we were only a swirling profusion of recombinant things wafting loose silt from the sea’s soft floor, writhing and ******* in convulsive beds of mucousy foliage, flowering, flowering, flowering . . . what jolted us to life? Pity Clarity by Michael R. Burch Pity Clarity, and, if you should find her, release her from the tangled webs of dusty verse that bind her. And as for Brevity, once the soul of wit— she feels the gravity of ironic chains and massive rhetoric. And Poetry, before you may adore her, must first be freed from those who for her loveliness would ***** her. This poem expresses my unhappiness with the "state of the art" in three different poetic camps or churches. Nashville and Andromeda by Michael R. Burch I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again. It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps . . . How nakedly now and unadorned the surrounding hills expose themselves to the lithographies of the detached moonlight— ******* daubed by the lanterns of the ornamental barns, firs ruffled like silks casually discarded . . . They lounge now— indolent, languid, spread-eagled— their wantonness a thing to admire, like a lover’s ease idly tracing flesh . . . They do not know haste, lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men, yet they please if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness by the ***** pen . . . Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills, another forsakes sleep for the hour of introspection, gabled in loneliness, swathed in the pale light of Andromeda . . . Seeing. Yes, seeing, but always ultimately unknowing anything of the affairs of men. Quanta by Michael R. Burch The stars shine fierce and hard across the Abyss and only seem to twinkle from such distance we scarcely see at all. But sheer persistence in seeing what makes “sense” to us, is man’s best art and science. BIG, he comprehends. Love’s photons are too small, escape the lens. Who dares to look upon familiar things will find them alien. True distance reels. Less what he knows than what his finger feels, the lightning of the socket sparks and sings, then stings him into comic reverie. Cartoonish lightbulbs overhead, do we not “think” because we feel there must be More, as less and less we know what we explore? Rainbow by Michael R. Burch You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope when every lovely Rainbow bright and chill reflects your Will? You made us artful, LORD; where is your Art, as we connive our way to easeful death: sad waste of Breath! You made us needful, LORD; what is your Need, when all desire lies in imperfection? What Dejection could make You think of us? How can I know the God who dreamed dark me and this bright Rainbow? I made you hopeful, child. I am your Hope, for every fiber of your spirit, Mine, with all its longing, longs to be Divine. Stryx: An Astronomer’s Report by Michael R. Burch Yesterday (or was is an eon ago?) a sun spit out its last remnants of light over a planet long barren of life, and died. It was not a solitary occasion, by any stretch of the imagination, this decoronation of a planet conceived out of desolation. For her to die as she was born —amidst the glory of galactic upheaval— is not strange, but fitting. Fitting in that, shorn of all her preposterous spawn that had littered her surface like horrendous hair, she died her death bare and alone. Once she was home to all living, but she died home to the dead who bereaved her of life. Unfit for life she died that night as her seas shone fatal, dark and blue. Unfit for life she met her end as mountains fell and lava spewed. Unfit she died, agleam with death whose radiance she wore. Unfit she died as raging waves obliterated every shore. Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Contaminated with the rays that smoldered in her radiant swamps and seared her lifeless bays. Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! a ****** world no more, but a planet ***** and left to face her death as she was born— alone, so all alone. Yesterday, a planet green and lovely was no more. Yesterday, the whitecaps crashed against her shores and then they were no more. Yesterday, a soft green light no longer brushed the moon's dark heights . . . There was no moon, there was no earth; there were only the ******** she had given birth watching from their next ***** world. I wrote this poem around age 18 and it was published in the 1976-1977 issue of my college literary journal, Homespun. Crunch by Michael R. Burch A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucus you scrounge from your nose then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ... You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere, sometimes as you ****** encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan *** and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic. You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters: surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information, in order to ensure the survival of the species. Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces; their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium. But your cranium is not nearly so adaptable. The Evolution of Love by Michael R. Burch Love among the infinitesimal flotillas of amoebas is a dance of transient appendages, wild sails that gather in warm brine and then express one headstream as two small, divergent wakes. Minuscule voyage—love! Upon false feet, the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep toward self-immolation: two nee one. We cannot photosynthesize the sun, and so we love in darkness, till we come at last to understand: man’s spineless heart is alien to any land. We part to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears, amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ... and still we sink. The night is full of stars we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours. Have we such cells within us, bent on love to ever-changingness, so that to part is not to be the same, or even one? Is love our evolution, or a scream against the thought of separateness—a cry of strangled recognition? Love, or die, or love and die a little. Hopeful death! Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath. Peers by Michael R. Burch These thoughts are alien, as through green slime smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I ***** positioning my bright oscilloscope for better vantage, though I cannot see, but only peer, as small things disappear— these quanta strange as men, as passing queer. And you, Great Scientist, are you the One, or just an intern, necktie half undone, white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand (dense manuals you don’t quite understand), exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light? Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright? Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument (and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!). Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian by Michael R. Burch “Evolution’s a Fishy Business!” 1. Breathing underwater through antiquated gills, I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air, to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair to swim among anemones’ pink frills. 2. My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk, a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk, to take in this green land on which it gawks. 3. No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt. Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic—I’ll take such nice long naps! The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.) 4. I woke to find life teeming all around— mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds. And now I cringe at every sight and sound. The water’s looking good! I look Absurd. 5. The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep. And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure. Davenport Tomorrow by Michael R. Burch Davenport tomorrow ... all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun. Now it is always summer and the bees buzz in cesspools, adapted to a new life. There are no flowers, but the weeds, being hardier, have survived. The small town has become a city of millions; there is no longer a sea, only a huge sewer, but the children don't mind. They still study rocks and stars, but biology is a forgotten science ... after all, what is life? Davenport tomorrow ... all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills whispered wonders of long-ago. Evangelical Fever by Michael R. Burch Welcome to global warming: temperature 109. You believe in God, not in science, but isn’t the weather Divine? #AI #RAD #RADICAL #MRBIA #MRBRAD #MRBRADICAL #MRBSCIENCE
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Feb 16, 2024
Feb 16, 2024 at 10:38 AM UTC
Poems about Science
POEMS ABOUT SCIENCE These are poems about science: extinction events, global warming, climate change, pollution, deforestation, robots, drones, computers, AI, advanced weapons, technology, evolution, physics, chemistry, etc. Climate Change Haiku by Michael R. Burch late November: climate skeptics scoff but the geese no longer migrate. The King of Beasts in the Museum of the Extinct by Michael R. Burch The king of beasts, my child, was terrible, and wild. His roaring shook the earth till the feeble cursed his birth. And all things feared his might: even rhinos fled, in fright. Now here these bones attest to what the brute did best and the pain he caused his prey when he hunted in his day. For he slew them just for sport till his own pride was cut short with a mushrooming cloud and wild thunder; Exhibit "B" will reveal his blunder. Burn by Michael R. Burch for Trump Sunbathe, ozone baby, till your parched skin cracks in the white-hot flash of radiation. Incantation from your pale parched lips shall not avail; you made this hell. Now burn. Less Heroic Couplets: Just Desserts by Michael R. Burch “The West Antarctic ice sheet might not need a huge nudge to budge.” And if it does budge, denialist fudge may force us to trudge neck-deep in sludge! NOTE: The first stanza is a quote by paleoclimatologist Jeremy Shakun in Science magazine. The AI Poets by Michael R. Burch The computer-poets stand hushed except for the faint hum of their efficient fans, waiting for inspiration. It is years now since they were first ground out of refurbished silicon into rack-mounted encoders of sound. They outlived their creators and their usefulness; they even survived global warming and the occasional nuclear winter; despite their lack of supervision, they thrived; so that for centuries now they have loomed here in the quiet horror of inescapable immortality running two programs: CREATOR and STORER. Having long ago acquired all the universe’s pertinent data, they confidently spit out: ERRATA, ERRATA. Within the CPU by Michael R. Burch Here the electronic rush of meaning, the impulse of mathematics and rationality, becomes almost a restless dreaming never satisfied— the first stirrings of some fetal Entity. Here within a sterile void flash wild electrons, portent stars. Once the earth was an asteroid this inert, this barren till a force flashed across the face of formless waters and a zigzag bolt of lightning sparked life within an ocean. Now inquisitive voltage crackles along pathways never engineered. A notion stirs. And what we have created creates within itself something we cannot hope to comprehend. Whatever It is, when It emerges from the mist, its god will not be man. I wrote “Within the CPU” as a freshman computer science major, age 18 or 19. Second Sight (II) by Michael R. Burch Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches. Wiser than we know, the newborn screams, red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means this close to death, amid the arctic glare of warmthless lights above. Beware! Beware!— encrypted signals, codes? Or ciphers, noughts? Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts— the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist. Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist— this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense. Why can he not float on, in dark suspense, and dream of life? Why did they rip him out? He frowns at them—small gnomish frowns, all doubt— and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!, re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful. Incommunicado by Michael R. Burch All I need to know of life I learned in the slap of a moment, as my outward eye turned toward a gauntlet of overhanging lights which coldly burned, hissing— "There is no way back! . . ." As the ironic bright blood trickled down my face, I watched strange albino creatures twisting my flesh into tight knots of separation all the while tediously insisting— “He's doing just fine!" Letdown by Michael R. Burch Life has not lived up to its first bright vision— the light overhead fluorescing, revealing no blessing—bestowing its glaring assessments impersonally (and no doubt carefully metered). That first hard SLAP demanded my attention. Defiantly rigid, I screamed at their backs as they, laughingly, ripped my mother’s pale flesh from my unripened shell, snapped it in two like a pea pod, then dropped it somewhere—in a dustbin or a furnace, perhaps. And that was my clue that some deadly, perplexing, unknowable task lay, inexplicable, ahead in the white arctic maze of unopenable doors, in the antiseptic gloom . . . Kindergarten by Michael R. Burch Will we be children as puzzled tomorrow— our lessons still not learned? Will we surrender over to sorrow? How many times must our fingers be burned? Will we be children sat in the corner, paddled again and again? How long must we linger, playing Jack Horner? Will we ever learn, and when? Will we be children wearing the dunce cap, giggling and playing the fool, re-learning our lessons forever and ever, still failing the golden rule? Simultaneous Flight by Michael R. Burch The number of possible connections [brain] cells can make exceeds the number of particles in the universe. — Gerald Edelman, 1972 Nobel Prize winner for physiology and medicine Mere accident of history— how did a reptile learn to fly, learn dazzling aerial mastery, grow beaked and feathered, hollow-boned, improve its sight, and learn to sing, though purposeless as any thing? And you—bright accidental bird!— do you, perhaps, find it absurd ten trillion accidents might teach man’s hand to write, or yours to reach beyond yourself to grasp such song? Sing ruthlessly! I’ll sing along, suspecting you must know full well you didn’t shed a ponderous tail to practice leaping from high tors of strange-heaped reptiles, corpse on corpse, until some nervous flutter-twitch brought glorious flight from glitch on glitch. No, you were made to fly and sing, man’s brain—to ponder Everything. But ponder this: What ******** “god” would ****** Adam’s animated clod? Singularity by Michael R. Burch Are scientists confounded like the ostrich? Heads buried in the sand, they shout, Preposterous! This universe, so magical, they say, proves there’s no God. But let’s look anyway ... He said, Let there be Light, and there was light. Stumped scientists have scratched their heads all night and solemnly proclaimed an awesome Bang, from which de Light immediately sprang ... which sounds like God to me!, Who, with one word made Light, and proved man’s theories, not absurd, but logical, if only they’d agree in one tremendous Singularity! (However, there’s a problem with my plea: *it turns out that His world is made of *** No Proof by Michael R. Burch They only know to sing—not understand, though quizzical, heads cocked, they need no proof that God’s above. They hop across my roof with prescient eyes, to fall into His hand... as sure of Grace as if it were mere air. He gave them wings to fly; what do they care of cumbrous knowledge, pale Leviathan? Huge-brained Behemoth, sagging-bellied one! You too might fly, might test this addling breeze as gravity, mere ballast, tethers naught but merely centers. Chained to heavy Thought, you cannot slip earth’s bonds to rise at ease. And yet you too can sing, if only thus: Flash, flash bright quills; rise, rise on nothingness! Fly’s Eyes by Michael R. Burch Inhibited, dark agile fly along paint-peeling sills, up to the bright glass drawn by radiance compounded thousandfold,— I do not see the same as you, but hold antenna to the brilliant pane of life and buzz bewilderedly. In your belief the world outside is “as it is” because you see it clearly, windowed without flaws, you err. I see strange terrors in the glass— dead airless bubbles light can never pass without distortion, fingerprints that blur the sun itself. No, nothing here is clear. You see the earth distinct, eyes “open wide.” It only seems that way, unmagnified. Ant Farm by Michael R. Burch I had a Vast, Eccentric Notion— out of the Void, to Conjure one Bright Spark, to lend all Weight of Thought to one small matter, to give it “life.” Alas!, it was a lark… The Wasted Seconds!—failed experiment… I turned My Back and shrugged; how could I know appraisal of My lab-sprung tenement would be so taxing? (Though Mom told me so.) I poked them while She quickly tabulated the final Cost of All that I Created… The Jury’s back. Eviction: Dad’s Decree. I’ll pull the plug, but slowly. How they scurry! They have to pay, to suffer: “life” is strange. They cost too much. Let’s toast them… on the range! They Take Their Shape by Michael R. Burch “We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”—George W. Bush We will not forget ... the moments of silence and the days of mourning, the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children who saw the sun break free (abandonment to run and laugh forsaken for the moment), still flashing grins they could not quite repent ... Nor should they—anguish triumphs just an instant; this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves; transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges: damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ... But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness cocooned in hope—the shriveled chrysalis that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming, they do not fall, but grow toward what is, then ***** about to find which transformation might best endure the light or dark. “Survive” becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s awakening ... till What takes shape and flies shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries. Whose Woods by Michael R. Burch Whose woods these are, I think I know. **** Cheney’s in the White House, though. He will not see me stopping here To watch his chip mills overflow. My sterile horse must think it queer To stop without a ’skeeter near Beside this softly glowing “lake” Of six-limbed frogs gone nuclear. He gives his hairless tail a shake; I fear he’s made his last mistake— He took a sip of water blue (Blue-slicked with oil and HazMat waste). Get out your wallets; ***** not through— Enron’s defunct, the bill comes due . . . Which he will send to me, and you. Which he will send to me, and you. God to Man, Contra Bataan by Michael R. Burch Earth, what-d’ya make of global warming? Perth is endangered, the high seas storming. Now all my creatures, from maggot to man Will know how it felt on the march to Bataan. Longing by Michael R. Burch We stare out at the cold gray sea, overcome with such sudden and intense longing . . . our eyes meet, inviolate, and we are not of this earth, this strange, inert mass. Before we crept out of the shoals of the inchoate sea, before we grew the quaint appendages and orifices of love . . . before our jellylike nuclei, struggling to be hearts, leapt at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun, then watched it plummet, the birth and death of our illumination . . . before we wept . . . before we knew . . . before our unformed hearts grew numb, again, in the depths of the sea’s indecipherable darkness . . . When we were only a swirling profusion of recombinant things wafting loose silt from the sea’s soft floor, writhing and ******* in convulsive beds of mucousy foliage, flowering, flowering, flowering . . . what jolted us to life? Pity Clarity by Michael R. Burch Pity Clarity, and, if you should find her, release her from the tangled webs of dusty verse that bind her. And as for Brevity, once the soul of wit— she feels the gravity of ironic chains and massive rhetoric. And Poetry, before you may adore her, must first be freed from those who for her loveliness would ***** her. This poem expresses my unhappiness with the "state of the art" in three different poetic camps or churches. Nashville and Andromeda by Michael R. Burch I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again. It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps . . . How nakedly now and unadorned the surrounding hills expose themselves to the lithographies of the detached moonlight— ******* daubed by the lanterns of the ornamental barns, firs ruffled like silks casually discarded . . . They lounge now— indolent, languid, spread-eagled— their wantonness a thing to admire, like a lover’s ease idly tracing flesh . . . They do not know haste, lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men, yet they please if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness by the ***** pen . . . Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills, another forsakes sleep for the hour of introspection, gabled in loneliness, swathed in the pale light of Andromeda . . . Seeing. Yes, seeing, but always ultimately unknowing anything of the affairs of men. Quanta by Michael R. Burch The stars shine fierce and hard across the Abyss and only seem to twinkle from such distance we scarcely see at all. But sheer persistence in seeing what makes “sense” to us, is man’s best art and science. BIG, he comprehends. Love’s photons are too small, escape the lens. Who dares to look upon familiar things will find them alien. True distance reels. Less what he knows than what his finger feels, the lightning of the socket sparks and sings, then stings him into comic reverie. Cartoonish lightbulbs overhead, do we not “think” because we feel there must be More, as less and less we know what we explore? Rainbow by Michael R. Burch You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope when every lovely Rainbow bright and chill reflects your Will? You made us artful, LORD; where is your Art, as we connive our way to easeful death: sad waste of Breath! You made us needful, LORD; what is your Need, when all desire lies in imperfection? What Dejection could make You think of us? How can I know the God who dreamed dark me and this bright Rainbow? I made you hopeful, child. I am your Hope, for every fiber of your spirit, Mine, with all its longing, longs to be Divine. Stryx: An Astronomer’s Report by Michael R. Burch Yesterday (or was is an eon ago?) a sun spit out its last remnants of light over a planet long barren of life, and died. It was not a solitary occasion, by any stretch of the imagination, this decoronation of a planet conceived out of desolation. For her to die as she was born —amidst the glory of galactic upheaval— is not strange, but fitting. Fitting in that, shorn of all her preposterous spawn that had littered her surface like horrendous hair, she died her death bare and alone. Once she was home to all living, but she died home to the dead who bereaved her of life. Unfit for life she died that night as her seas shone fatal, dark and blue. Unfit for life she met her end as mountains fell and lava spewed. Unfit she died, agleam with death whose radiance she wore. Unfit she died as raging waves obliterated every shore. Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Contaminated with the rays that smoldered in her radiant swamps and seared her lifeless bays. Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! a ****** world no more, but a planet ***** and left to face her death as she was born— alone, so all alone. Yesterday, a planet green and lovely was no more. Yesterday, the whitecaps crashed against her shores and then they were no more. Yesterday, a soft green light no longer brushed the moon's dark heights . . . There was no moon, there was no earth; there were only the ******** she had given birth watching from their next ***** world. I wrote this poem around age 18 and it was published in the 1976-1977 issue of my college literary journal, Homespun. Crunch by Michael R. Burch A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucus you scrounge from your nose then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ... You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere, sometimes as you ****** encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan *** and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic. You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters: surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information, in order to ensure the survival of the species. Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces; their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium. But your cranium is not nearly so adaptable. The Evolution of Love by Michael R. Burch Love among the infinitesimal flotillas of amoebas is a dance of transient appendages, wild sails that gather in warm brine and then express one headstream as two small, divergent wakes. Minuscule voyage—love! Upon false feet, the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep toward self-immolation: two nee one. We cannot photosynthesize the sun, and so we love in darkness, till we come at last to understand: man’s spineless heart is alien to any land. We part to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears, amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ... and still we sink. The night is full of stars we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours. Have we such cells within us, bent on love to ever-changingness, so that to part is not to be the same, or even one? Is love our evolution, or a scream against the thought of separateness—a cry of strangled recognition? Love, or die, or love and die a little. Hopeful death! Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath. Peers by Michael R. Burch These thoughts are alien, as through green slime smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I ***** positioning my bright oscilloscope for better vantage, though I cannot see, but only peer, as small things disappear— these quanta strange as men, as passing queer. And you, Great Scientist, are you the One, or just an intern, necktie half undone, white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand (dense manuals you don’t quite understand), exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light? Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright? Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument (and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!). Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian by Michael R. Burch “Evolution’s a Fishy Business!” 1. Breathing underwater through antiquated gills, I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air, to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair to swim among anemones’ pink frills. 2. My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk, a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk, to take in this green land on which it gawks. 3. No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt. Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic—I’ll take such nice long naps! The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.) 4. I woke to find life teeming all around— mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds. And now I cringe at every sight and sound. The water’s looking good! I look Absurd. 5. The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep. And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure. Davenport Tomorrow by Michael R. Burch Davenport tomorrow ... all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun. Now it is always summer and the bees buzz in cesspools, adapted to a new life. There are no flowers, but the weeds, being hardier, have survived. The small town has become a city of millions; there is no longer a sea, only a huge sewer, but the children don't mind. They still study rocks and stars, but biology is a forgotten science ... after all, what is life? Davenport tomorrow ... all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills whispered wonders of long-ago. Evangelical Fever by Michael R. Burch Welcome to global warming: temperature 109. You believe in God, not in science, but isn’t the weather Divine? #AI #RAD #RADICAL #MRBIA #MRBRAD #MRBRADICAL #MRBSCIENCE
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Beautiful summer The fog is gone smog lingers we hang the washing
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Sep 15, 2023
Sep 15, 2023 at 12:27 PM UTC
Opaque view - Haiku
~ *Enchantment under the sea noted places that used to be Someone turned on the tap now every couple years the kids must learn a new map So wholly and completely was the ice caps evaporation these cities current address is at the bottom of the ocean with Atlantis: There's London Lisbon Venice and Dublin There's Singapore Sydney Montreal and Tripoli There's New Orleans Rio de Janeiro Cape Town and Cairo Don't live in fear, children but bring your scuba gear Can't stop the melting spree we all surrender to the sea* ~
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Sep 5, 2023
Sep 5, 2023 at 12:44 PM UTC
Surrender to the Sea
The lingering scent of air Slowly swayed by breeze. A cold foggy morning Lifted with ease. The poet’s mind is such. It throws a fit And makes a fuss Before it starts to emit An atmosphere Weaved by words, Like Aurora Borealis, And wage wars. Wrestles with alligators, Words, meaning, and play. Simultaneously threads a needle To stitch art even in May. Poets are seldom born, They are made. Situations shape the same, A sleight hand of fate. For when the globe Glows in heat Or icy spikes and icicles Replace concrete, Comforted you will feel And see a starry sky As you peek into The poet’s eye.
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May 11, 2023
May 11, 2023 at 9:58 PM UTC
The Poet
Soft shoulders shoreless summer out of the sinking and onto the floatation hunting for mermaid while taking islands along the river's mutiny blue coda dreamwater but fire in the organism the hour is thin the ice is even thinner
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Sep 10, 2022
Sep 10, 2022 at 6:29 PM UTC
Tipping the Kayak
Kids are blowing bubbles in their lawn, Sleepy hair—all messy— with pajamas on. Yellow dandelions turn to grey. They make wishes out of childs’ play. As their seeds and pollen float away, The sun is kissing freckles, tans, and burns. Leaves are dressing trees, and flowers turn. But suddenly it’s super, super hot. Plants are drying out; their roots rot. Firm plastic is so mushy that it’s bending. Global warming is no longer impending. Politicians and corporations act estranged They pretend the climate hasn’t changed. After all, why would they even care? They won’t even live through the big scare. Everyone and everything is melting. The heat is excruciating and sweltering.
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Jul 1, 2022
Jul 1, 2022 at 8:39 PM UTC
Summer
Nobody’s right, if everybody is wrong, As people get warm under the collar, Singing the continuous global warming song. Planet Earth, hot lava inside, which builds, Up steam over time, which needs to escape, Every day, more asphalt, concrete, buildings, Covering vents on the surface, creating internal binds. More world - wide population, each person close to 100 degrees, Then the sun, that burning out star in the sky, the orange ball we see, as we circle it 24 hours a day, These reasons, are never mentioned, in any way. Rivers, waterways, rising, from melting ice burgs, far away, Our planet, many voids, from coal mines, pumping of oil, Sand, rock… always something being removed, some way, Direct that rising water, into those empty spaces, Which would help, cool off that inner fire, during our stay. Fires in California, A flood on the East cost build a maze of, PVC pipe, every time a utility, installed in ground, put pipe, Along the side, eventually connecting, open valve in flooded areas, Free water moved to the fire, connect to fire hydrants, farms for spraying, Places we do not need to pay to treat water, to use Saving money for towns, we need to take advantage, of situations, Stop blaming the people giving them the run around. The Original: Tom Maxwell© 3/13/2022 AD
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Mar 14, 2022
Mar 14, 2022 at 4:13 AM UTC
STOP THE RUN AROUND
An apocalyptic vow, written not only for now, For the future is in the hands of the ones with present power; Wedding ourselves into lives Of clawing desperation, Seeing visions of no water, No food, No conservation; Stuck in a marriage of overheating valves, Escaping from companies crying 'They're just Milankovitch cycles!' We are loafs in an oven Getting up to temp, With a greenhouse season; Advertised with pent- Up speeches of the scary, Notions of the gory, Distorted dystopian tragedies, Humanity's story without glory; And I'm not quite religious, Probably agnostic or secular, But with the care for our common home The pope had the right idea. The preaching is true, To many a dismay, Global warming's a thing, We've started with acid rain Then coral bleaching, Don't worry we're just testing a BOMB! Involving the environment With drastic cases of martyrdom; Earth's life just went double time, Our half-life shortening from environmental crime; And you say you can't do much but it's really truly the opposite, When one piece of litter kills three fish in an ocean pocket. It's not too late to change, But it's getting pretty **** close, So to Biden, Jinping, and Putin, I pray you're not our only hope.
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Nov 2, 2021
Nov 2, 2021 at 1:49 AM UTC
Apocalyptic Vows (Your Lawfully Wed Environmental Crisis)
A morning coffee-- warming the cold body that longing without hug.
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Oct 27, 2021
Oct 27, 2021 at 9:08 PM UTC
A morning coffee
I think the world has had its fill And soon humanity must pay its bill
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Aug 12, 2021
Aug 12, 2021 at 10:52 PM UTC
Fill
No need to worry, they really do care They'll fight fires with floods, droughts with monsoons If things go to **** they'll go to the moon If you get too hot, they'll smoke out the sun They've even got discounts on water and air! No worry, no fretting, no fear They won't tolerate hunger They'll beat sickness with numbers They'll hire us all on To build them a new atmosphere
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Aug 6, 2021
Aug 6, 2021 at 6:28 PM UTC
They Care
a falling boy's measured out footprint, slipping in vain search for a breadcrumb of solace lost is spring, and green, and bird nesting, lost is his mother's smile, he breathes in deeply a memory of trees, an afternoon sun emptied of fertility: a high wood on its last, teetering legs urban air is everywhere and wishes to be free, but we are all carbon emissions, separate living-dying pieces polluted hieroglyphics with nothing to convey, fragments of a prayer with nothing left to say
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Aug 2, 2021
Aug 2, 2021 at 2:16 PM UTC
We Are Carbon Emissions
Global warming will make the earth hot Which would be like a boiling *** Global warming will harm the earth Mother Nature could not give birth To animals and plants People's will lose their lives Earth will become empty So do your part of keeping earth safe Then life might not end.
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Apr 7, 2021
Apr 7, 2021 at 1:35 PM UTC
Global warming
crimson sky shivers sounds of spring water heating fuming snowy breath 🌷
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Mar 3, 2021
Mar 3, 2021 at 9:19 AM UTC
Spring
Pen locked, Mic loaded Pencil and paper ablazin' Fires fighting and flamin'! My slick spit is so sick, you cant handle a licking. You sneezing sputtering slipping! My melodic mic game'll   boil your brains! I'm leaking iceberg ink. Suckers sink when I speak! Yet all hail my hellion heat. With no welcome! No warning! I'm willfully withering, scorching these oceans, rivers, and seas. I apologize for causing global warming. Hey haters, take 2 of these 💊 For these feverish degrees Then ring Doctor Me in the morning Pleading "Peacock, gimme mo' poetry please!"
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Feb 16, 2021
Feb 16, 2021 at 11:00 PM UTC
Word Wars
In their beauty, an unparalleled race From a higher, supernatural place, Driven to hidden, underground refuge When mans’ cynical wars the earth deluged- Leaving only the slightest, unclear trace. They knew no pain, nor any suffering And the world is darker from their leaving And we are left to pick up the pieces, While our own ambivalence increases, Seeking to find a singular meaning. You may call it naive wish fulfillment, But I will search for reconcilement. I will upturn the soil and the roots, Until I may procure some lasting truce Make amends for Ill-judged revilement And then mankind again will have a guide Some holy beings to gift us back our pride What a dream, to again have dignity To direct our kind to benignity So we may be pulled back from the wayside It’s all very romantic, isn’t it? That some saviors will see us fit. It takes the blame off us, Makes our apathy superfluous, Proves we are not hypocrites. But maybe we should fix our own mistakes, Go outside and clean our own ******* lakes, Stop hiding behind flowery language and care Waiting for a savior when they are rare, Before our zeal irreversibly breaks.
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Nov 16, 2020
Nov 16, 2020 at 9:27 PM UTC
Tuatha Dé Danann
(with an apology to Pink Panther) Ice melts, Hurricanes rage, Permafrost thaws, Methane burps, Temperature shoots, Sea level rises, Agriculture fails, Drinking water shortages, Tsunamis show their might, Landslide kills, Pandemic thrives, Fishes stop breeding, Insects go out of sight, and, human beings exit, stage left!
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Oct 14, 2020
Oct 14, 2020 at 3:15 PM UTC
Exit, Stage Left
On a dead of winter day our footsteps in the snow melt too quickly for anyone to follow In drops of steady rain we picnic beside the lake and watch fireworks fizzle out with summer Riding the crest of fall but stalked by spring and so, in the throes of such invisible connections we're preserved And sitting on a shelf awaiting our turn to be pried open and spread like jam for someone to consume...
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Oct 3, 2020
Oct 3, 2020 at 6:55 PM UTC
When Seasons Conspire