by phillipw | May 19, 2020 | AD, DA, JO
Banjul…We Are Very Far Apart I’m at the margin of your universe. In fact, I’m banished past the boundaries of It, out in outer darkness. I am worse Than lines sans meaning, meter, rhyme or love, So far as your concerned. The galaxy That forms the center of your...
by phillipw | May 18, 2020 | AD, DA, JE
The Pygmy Despair The other John was in there first or you Were in him first. (That’s what I suspect.) I Was not the first and that’s the point. Your true Loves, firstly, are for one who made you cry, Who hurt you awfully, pepper sprayed your heart, And then for...
by phillipw | May 18, 2020 | AD, DA, JO, LO, RO
On Waves of Song Relief comes in as slowly as a tide On gentle coasts but feels as urgent as The tidal bore up Severn. Hope had died Until you spoke and now I feel like jazz Is jiving in my bones. The slowness came Because my heart was made of numbness, so My...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | DA, ME, RE, WH, WO
Antechambers My father’s residence was memories As if a chambered nautilus turned back To find in older shapes a lustrous ease As snug in paradox, as neat in tack As any yacht that sails against the wind. He found his comfort in a smaller place When he, an...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | AD, DA, LO, RE
A Plea from Sodom and Gomorrah Please return to pain and bruising, not scars With numbness in the tissue. Trauma gives A certainty at least. Those dense armoires Of pale cicatrice commemoratives Might be, you think, better than current harms That sting, then ache,...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | AD, DA, JO
Secondhand Frank John handed me a jacket of the sort They call a fleece in England, made of mild Beige man-made fiber looking like a short And curly lambskin. Then perhaps he smiled Though what that meant I would not know. I tried it on because it was a...
