Petrified Voices in the Verses

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

The older voices call in me.  The smell

Of marble mined for sculptures, dust of stone

Is in the words.  White bearded throats compel

Male thinking.  Sometimes lines contain cologne

Mark Anthony mixed in with scents his queen

Had spread upon her breasts, his chest upon

Her, they not thinking of the unforeseen

Asp fangs.  More ancient still spreads bushveldt dawn

That hears the chanting from a cave where art

Is drawn eight-thousand and two hundred years

Ago.  A baby clasped against the heart . . .

A mother soothes some words against her fears.

  Or older still the screaming and the groans

    Atlantis heard when earthquake crushed fleshed bones.

~ Phillip Whidden