by phillipw | Jan 21, 2024 | AB, AE, BE, DE, ES, PH, Uncategorized, YA
Awe of the Heavenly Bodies Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The moon would kill to have a face the shape And beauty that yours shows, the smoothness, force, The splendor of your dazzle with escape...
by phillipw | Nov 12, 2023 | AB, GA, LO, RO
Alchemy’s Golden Paradox in Heaven’s Streets of Transparent Gold Love, I am full of lead. ~ Antony in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, III.11.76 His heart was made of lead, its poison, weight And darkness till he met the one, that one Who mattered only, only,...
by phillipw | Nov 11, 2023 | AB, Uncategorized, YA
Not Just Stars Your eyes glow, not just stars , more moon and sun. The stars and sun are more than fire, the moon Of water made. Its frozen waves are one With ever meltingness and change too soon Yet they are overarched by solar heat And North Star fixity. ...
by phillipw | Oct 3, 2023 | AB, YA
I think that we will live apart as trees Must live, not even in two woodlands near Each other. Maybe some stray autumn breeze Will carry messages from sphere to sphere And I will try to feel that roots and roots Will almost touch — but dreams are only...
by phillipw | Jul 25, 2023 | AB, RO, YA
Rather Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Imagine that I wrote five trillion times In Latin, or in Sanskrit, or in Greek Of Sappho, or in Shakespeare’s sonnet rhymes, In...
by phillipw | Jul 7, 2023 | AB, LO, RO, SA, SE
Sanctity in the Dawn I wake up in the first light, launched to love. I wake up fraught as if the Holy Ghost Filled both my lungs and hovered just above Each vein and artery and bone, engrossed Me everywhere inside my soul. Of course It is not God who rams...
by phillipw | Jan 14, 2022 | AB
An Empty Road An empty road is more expressive than An interstate or crowded motorway With traffic. Lack of woman and of man Along the vacant stretch, not downtown splay Of Fords and buses, trucks and such upon An asphalt street, invites the...
by phillipw | Mar 6, 2021 | AB, AE, AR, BE, CU, ES, MO
Picasso! Don’t look at nature after art to slight The art. The point of art is not to ape But thinking. Artists target to incite, Not prettify, but cause the mind to gape. To criticize a painting for a lack Of slavishness to facts is silliness Akin to faulting...
by phillipw | Sep 15, 2020 | AB, AN, MU, RE
Laius and Jocasta, Medea, etc. Simone de Beauvoir speaks of passion “born from love to murder love.” Does she mean women (or their men) who want Abortions after passion (or just sex Or lust)? Does she mean women born to haunt The cosmos with those listless babies,...
by phillipw | Jul 17, 2020 | AB, FE, FO, GE, PO
I Don’t Know which e-Company Tried to Abort my Poem, but I Won Anyhow (the Complacent Bastards) Today I found a sonnet I’d mislaid. In some brief crisis of a laptop sort. I’d e-mailed lines to me because afraid That in a crash a system glitch would thwart The still...
by phillipw | May 19, 2020 | AB, HE, PI
Abelard and Heloïse Illuminated When Abelard was my age, he was dead. I think he would have lived eternally If he had known he’d be stiff as French bread Flutes, as sticks of it dressed infernally, When painted in the Roman de la Rose In red and orange...
by phillipw | May 18, 2020 | AB, CR, NI
Crepe Myrtle Armory A pink of seriousness, of solemn frills, Is roasting in the tropic sun. A breeze From hottest sultriness and languor spills Across the flowers and leaves. They are at ease Though. This is what God made them for and so They flourish in their...
by phillipw | May 11, 2020 | AB, JA, PO
From the Enlightenment to Gazing at a Dark-haired Navel...
by phillipw | Apr 13, 2020 | AB
Providence In literature the darkest deeds of men Required the sanction of the gods. God called The patriarch to kill his son, so then He took him to the altar, not appalled The least bit. David was ordained to kill The giant, pulp his brain and cut his head...
by phillipw | Mar 16, 2020 | AB
Aberdeen, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen, Viscount of Formartine, Lord Haddo, Methlick, Tarves, and Kellie He looks so handsome in the portrait by Sir Tomas Lawrence (1828) Perhaps you might say pretty to the eye. From early on he...
by phillipw | Feb 26, 2020 | AB, AN, HA, RO, YE
…..Suffocated Devotions ……….“the fame of his lost love” Who cares about the love of Yazid choked Forever in that clogging of the throat, About Antinous, whose death is cloaked In rumors and suspicions as they float Above the marble whiteness of...