Shelley Offers Warning

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

“The desire of the moth for the star”

He has a love affair with love so close

He even fights with it.  Well, he’s a man

And men love fights.  He had an overdose

Of love back in his twenties.  Love’s divan

Was set like opera comique on stage

For Brecht’s dramatic irony.  Around

Him everyone could see the open cage

He opted not to exit.  Offstage sound

Was heard by everyone but he refused to hear.

Now decades gone the drama looms too strong

For repetition so he quarrels.  Fear

Of tortures is the climax of heart’s song.

  He fights to save his psyche from new scars . . .

    Because he’s sick of all those moth-sought stars.

~ Phillip Whidden