These are original epigrams and parodies by Michael R. Burch ...
Brief Fling I
by Michael R. Burch
“Epigram”
means cram,
then scram!
Published by Brief Poems and The HyperTexts
***
Brief Fling II
by Michael R. Burch
To write an epigram,
cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
Published by Brief Poems and The HyperTexts
***
Brief Fling III
by Michael R. Burch
No one gives a damn about my epigram?
And yet they’ll spend billions on Boy George and Wham!
Do they have any idea just how hard I cram?
Published by The HyperTexts
***
Proper Worship, or, Rational Religion
by Michael R. Burch
for the Divine Oscar Wilde
If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!
***
The Whole of Wit
by Michael R. Burch
for and after Richard Moore
If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity
are the whole of it.
Published by Shot Glass Journal, Brief Poems, AZquotes, IdleHearts, JarOfQuotes, QuoteFancy, QuoteMaster
***
Fleet Tweet: Apologies to Shakespeare
@mikerburch (Michael R. Burch)
A tweet
by any other name
would be as fleet.
***
Fleet Tweet II: Further Apologies to Shakespeare
@mikerburch (Michael R. Burch)
Remember, doggonit,
heroic verse crowns the Shakespearean sonnet!
So if you intend to write a couplet,
please do it on the doublet!
***
Untitled Epigrams
I will never grok picking a picky rule over a Poem! – Michael R. Burch
Improve yourself by others' writings, attaining freely what they purchased at great expense. — Socrates, translation by Michael R. Burch
Experience is the best teacher but a hard taskmaster.—Michael R. Burch
Heaven and hell seem unreasonable to me: the actions of men do not deserve such extremes.
—Jorge Luis Borges, translation by Michael R. Burch
Reality is neither probable nor likely.
—Jorge Luis Borges, translation by Michael R. Burch
Wayne Gretzky was pure skill poured into skates.—Michael R. Burch
Neither the leaf nor the tree laments karma.—Michael R. Burch
***
Less Heroic Couplets: Gilded Silence
by Michael R. Burch
Golden silence reigned supreme
in my nightmare and her dream.
***
Christ!
by Michael R. Burch
If I knew men could be so dumb,
I would never have come!
Now you lie, cheat and steal in my name
and make it a thing of shame.
Did I heal the huge holes in your heart, in your head?
Isn’t it obvious: I’m dead
and unable to repeal what I never said?
***
A Further Farewell to Dentistry
by Michael R. Burch
(for and after Richard Moore, from whom I absconded the title)
Lately I've been eschewing
ice chewing
and my indentured dentist’s been boo-hoo-hooing.
***
EPIGRAM TRANSLATIONS BY MICHAEL R. BURCH
Speechless at Auschwitz
by Ko Un
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
At Auschwitz
piles of glasses
mountains of shoes ...
returning, we stared out different windows.
Ko Un speaks for all of us, by not knowing what to say about the evidence of the Holocaust, and man's inhumanity to man.
Ko Un was speechless at Auschwitz.
Someday, when it’s too late,
will we be speechless at Gaza?
—Michael R. Burch
Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their whores for exotic positions.
—Thomas Campion, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Elevate your words, not their volume. Rain grows flowers, not thunder.—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Why should I brood when every petal of my being is blossoming?—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
What you seek also pursues you.—Rumi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
This is love: to fly toward a mysterious sky,
to cause ten thousand veils to fall.
First, to stop clinging to life,
then to step out, without feet ...
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Love renders reason senseless.
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I test the tightrope
balancing a child
in each arm.
—Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Let me live with joy today, since tomorrow is unforeseeable.
—Palladas of Alexandria, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
To live without philosophizing is to close one's eyes and never attempt to open them. – Rene Descartes, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Religion is the opiate of the people.—Karl Marx
Religion is the dopiate of the sheeple.—Michael R. Burch
How happy the soul who speeds back to the Source,
but crowned with peace is the one who never came.
—a Sophoclean passage from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Improve yourself by others' writings, attaining freely what they purchased at great expense.
—Socrates, translation by Michael R. Burch
EPIGRAMS BY MICHAEL R. BURCH
Brief Fling
by Michael R. Burch
“Epigram”
means cram,
then scram!
Published by Brief Poems, Poem Today and The HyperTexts
Brief Fling II
by Michael R. Burch
To write an epigram,
cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
Published by Brief Poems, Ethnu Couplet and The HyperTexts
Brief Fling III
by Michael R. Burch
No one gives a damn about my epigram?
And yet they’ll spend billions on Boy George and Wham!
Do they have any idea just how hard I cram?
Nod to the Master
by Michael R. Burch
for the Divine Oscar Wilde
If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!
Stage Fright
by Michael R. Burch
To be or not to be?
In the end Hamlet
opted for naught.
Erotic Errata
by Michael R. Burch
I didn’t mean to love you; if I did,
it came unbid-
en, and should’ve remained hid-
den!
Dry Hump
by Michael R. Burch
You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.
Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch
Intimations
by Michael R. Burch
Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.
Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.
Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch
Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.
Less Heroic Couplets: Shell Game
by Michael R. Burch
I saw a turtle squirtle!
Before you ask, “How fertile?”
The squirt came from its mouth.
Why do your thoughts fly south?
The best tonic for other people's bad ideas is to think for oneself.—Michael R. Burch
I will never grok picking a picky rule over a Poem!—Michael R. Burch
Experience is the best teacher but a hard taskmaster.—Michael R. Burch
Wayne Gretzky was pure skill poured into skates.—Michael R. Burch
Neither the leaf nor the tree laments karma.—Michael R. Burch
Less Heroic Couplets: Gilded Silence
by Michael R. Burch
Golden silence reigned supreme
in my nightmare and her dream.
Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch
I’m not looking for someone to save.
A gal has to do what a gal has to do:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.
How many highways to hell must I pave
with intentions imagined, not true?
I’m not looking for someone to save.
Fools praise compassion while weaklings rave,
but a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.
Some praise the Lord but the Devil’s my fave
because he has led me to you!
I’m not looking for someone to save.
In the land of the free and the home of the brave,
a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.
Every day without meds becomes a close shave
and the razor keeps tempting me too.
I’m not looking for someone to save:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.
She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
There’s a light about her
like the moon through a mist:
a bright incandescence
with which she is blessed
and my heart to her light
like the tide now is pulled . . .
she is fair, O, and bright
like the moon silver-veiled.
There’s a fire within her
like the sun’s leaping forth
to lap up the darkness
of night from earth's hearth
and my eyes to her flame
like twin moths now are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.
The Difference
by Michael R. Burch
The chimneysweeps
will weep
for Blake,
who wrote his poems
for their dear sake.
The critics clap,
polite, for you.
Another poem
for poets,
Whooo!
Crunch
by Michael R. Burch
for Trump
A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucous 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 snatch encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan ass
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.
“Crunch” is a poem about evolution and survival of the fittest which questions where human beings really are the planet earth’s most advanced life forms. Keywords/Tags: evolution, global warming, insects, cockroaches, advance life form, survival of the fittest, adaptability
Teddy Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick; Donald Trump speaks loudly and carries a big shtick.—Michael R. Burch
Viral Donald (I)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"
Donald Trump is coronaviral:
his brain's in a downward spiral.
His pale nimbus of hair
proves there's nothing up there
but an empty skull, fluff and denial.
Viral Donald (II)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"
Why didn't Herr Trump, the POTUS,
protect us from the Coronavirus?
That weird orange corona of hair's an alarm:
Trump is the Virus in Human Form!
Limerick-Ode to a Much-Eaten Ass
by Michael R. Burch
There wonst wus a president, Trump,
whose greatest ass (et) wus his rump.
It was padded ’n’ shiny,
that great orange hiney,
but to drain it we’d need a sump pump!
The Less-Than-Divine Results of My Prayers to be Saved from Televangelists
by Michael R. Burch
I’m old,
no longer bold,
just cold,
and (truth be told),
been bought and sold,
rolled
by the wolves and the lambs in the fold.
Who’s to be told
by this worn-out scold?
The complaint department is always on hold.
Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch
Teeter Tots
by Michael R. Burch
For your spuds to become Tater Tots,
first, artfully cut out the knots,
then dice them to cubes
deep-fried, served to rubes,
(but not if they’re acting like snots).
Keywords/Tags: epigram, epigrams, tweet, tweets, cram, scram, brevity, levity, heroic couplet
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