by phillipw | Sep 3, 2023 | AN, DI, GR, RA, RE, SE
The Ancient Gods in Perfect Geometric Shapes Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The skyward gods (like levitating shapes Of gold) float flawless, utter in the air, The ether, far above their crimes and...
by phillipw | Apr 23, 2023 | AR, DE, DI, GR, PH, SC, Uncategorized
Figuring Futilely on the Death Date of Shakespeare “But thy eternal summer shall not fade” ~ Sonnet 18 The statue still defies his death or hers Two thousands years or more beyond the grave Or urn of ashes, shaping that prefers The perfect lie that, carving, Greeks...
by phillipw | Jan 5, 2023 | CH, DI, GO
Compassion “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” Matthew 10:29 Compassion is a tearless grief, an eye Like God’s. How else could He survive? He sees And...
by phillipw | Apr 4, 2022 | DI, HE, OP, PU
The Soprano and the Incarcerated Singing A woman sings soprano and she goes To visit men in prison. She instructs How they should give the bass line and transpose Distress with voices. Her voice conducts Them how to deal with Dido’s sorrow near The pyre and waves...
by phillipw | Feb 23, 2022 | DI, GO, IN
Like Mystics Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem It isn’t strange that men draw us to God, That women, children, boys and girls require The heart to think divinity, not odd...
by phillipw | Dec 13, 2021 | BI, DI, JU
Primordial Beaks Before Our Daybreak The songbirds hop among the flowers, upon The ground, and on the branches of the trees And branchings of the roses. In dark dawn They wake to turn their heads and search through breeze And whispering sunrise for their early...
by phillipw | Sep 30, 2021 | DI, GA, JO, LU
As If Mingled Throughout our Air Yet Distant, Distant, Distant Elusive as pale pulsing ghosts that hide In Galliano robes, stars’ glamour shifts From seeming to enchantment. Like a bride Suspended in a galaxy, glow lifts And levitates. The stars and starlets...
by phillipw | Sep 28, 2021 | BR, DI, Ho, LU, MA
Angels Are Never Blue Except in Hollywood The Tinsel Town attempt to stop the heart Is far too obvious, just like its screened Stupidities for teenage boys. A tart Poised on a staircase after being preened Shows off her legs like Cyd Charisse. A stool Displays the...
by phillipw | Sep 7, 2021 | DI, GI, GO, Ho, JE, NO, PA, TR
Supreme L-o-n-g-s-h-o-t-(s) The Father reigns supreme in every way. It’s all a bit uncertain if the Son Came later and is lesser (this sounds gay) But still divine. And then the other One Is even more ambiguous. We know This biblically,...
by phillipw | Sep 7, 2021 | AG, DI, ET, GO, HE, IM, JE, LO
The Immortality of the Trinity’s Adoration of Lost Souls The bliss of all the saints in Heaven is Piss poor when set against the searing pain Of those in Hell. God loves and loves. Gee Whizz, Though, what about the agony, that stain, Eternal filthy stain upon that...
by phillipw | Mar 21, 2021 | AN, CO, DE, DI, FA, FE, FU, HE, KE, PE, SE, SK
Coffin, Bed, Whatever He used to have a black nacrotic ____ But now, because of you, it swells again. It pulses and is desperate to _____ Out words and symphonies so full of pain That laughter is the only option. ____ Is there if you desire it in your throat. If...
by phillipw | Feb 12, 2021 | DI
The Feeling of Time and Its Invariable Companion Où sont les neiges d’antan? ~ François Villon Of all our spiritual possessions this One measures deepest, far: “the pathos of Distance,” says Nietzsche. It is that abyss Between the past and now, and how the...
by phillipw | Jan 24, 2021 | DI, NO, ON, PH, UN
Diversity Does Not Equal Ontological Division Since all are different, they are all the same. If there were some exceptions to this rule, Just two would do, then these two sames would shame The thoughts of Monism. This ridicule By sameness would destroy the doctrine,...
by phillipw | Jan 21, 2021 | AE, BE, DI, ES, Ho, IL, RE, RO
Gardener, Heal Thyself for the Sake of Devout Worship Recovering from fever, he looks through His window. Roses bloom in glory there But they are powerless to cure. The view Should help at least, perhaps more than a prayer By priests to pagan goddesses of earth. Yet...
by phillipw | Dec 27, 2020 | CH, DI, FR, GA, Ho, LO, MA, SP, WA
When Washington Created Lasting Love on M Street, Georgetown Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem You sum up everything I lost, An April made unending since we shared The cherry blossoms as in Pentecost,...
by phillipw | Dec 9, 2020 | CO, DE, DI, GH, MA, OR, PE, RE, SO, SP
Reincarnation The spirit wishes it could look back to Its body, not the rotted one, and see The firm young form with hair and holy blue Of Mary’s robe in clear young eyes still free Of intimations of their death. The hair, The blond head...
by phillipw | Dec 1, 2020 | AE, BE, DI, ES, EY, GO, IL, JE
Revelations Revelation 21:19 Your eyes arrived as if a sea of blue Is where they came up from, as if they rose From Caribbean waves. If all love blue, Then all adore your look. Your eyes expose In just one glance divinity the way That it would choose...
by phillipw | Nov 15, 2020 | DI, GO, ME, OR, RE
Seilênos, Apollo, and Orpheus Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem We want a poet who is satyr, god (As Dionysus), both, and more, combined. We want his beard raised high and want him shod...
by phillipw | Nov 12, 2020 | DE, DI, MU, NE, SE, VI
Flies “I am a crazed dingo with fresh babies lying in a circle around me.” ~ Jaime Mathis, It Rises and Falls In Dennis Nilsen’s dreams a garland of Young men is laid out all around him for His delectation. They had wanted love (Or maybe Smirnoff...
by phillipw | Oct 23, 2020 | DI, FR, IN, LA, NI, PH, SY
Playing with Himself and the Piano Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Infernal Recurrence, more like. That Big Mind locked itself up in the bedroom of His hosts. A mad philosophical pig, He banged the...
by phillipw | Oct 13, 2020 | AN, AP, BE, CH, DI, JE, MA, RE
Christ vs. Apollo Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem If true Apollo’s temple has been crushed By buildings of the Vatican, the ground Of Lord Apollo’s prophecies now hushed By singing in the...
by phillipw | Sep 14, 2020 | AN, BR, CH, DA, DI, PI, RO, WI, WO
All’s Right with the World Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “Nature … in the very act of labouring as a machine is also sleeping as a picture.” Canon J. B. Mozely, University Lectures, sermon on...
by phillipw | Aug 10, 2020 | DE, DI, GH, GO, HA, JE, SO, TR, YE
Knowing Men Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. ~ Ezekiel 16:49 Both Sodom and Gomorrah, salt-lick...
by phillipw | Jul 20, 2020 | CH, DI, JO, KE, PL, PR, SO
True Love For Charles Randall Stanfield Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “I can never feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its Beauty.” ~ John Keats...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | AP, DI, GO, LI, ME, MU, PO, RH
The Cavern Leading to the Muses When Linus first invented rhythm with A melody in song, the beauty came Ideal — so lovely that a sacred myth Could not compete. Apollo could not tame A thing so perfect, so he had to kill The poet. Deity must never lose With humans,...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | DI, IN, PH, PL, PO, SO, TI
Spells and the Thoughts of Tiresias “Halliwell’s basic argument is that Socrates admits the Book X arguments to be insecure and open to defeat. He calls them ‘spells’ rather than philosophical knowledge, and he asserts that he must use them [those arguments]...
by phillipw | Jul 12, 2020 | DI, MI, PL, PO
Mixed Race Divinity and Humanity Socrates “builds up a picture of the poet as ‘a light, winged, holy creature’, who cannot compose until he is out of his mind and possessed . . . . The god takes away the poet’s senses, and uses him . . . so that the poems he utters...
by phillipw | Jul 6, 2020 | DE, DI, OR
Desperate Measure Eurydice, she knew the gods too well. She knew that they would find a way to harm Herself, her lover, and her love. Lost hell Was where that Pluto lived forever. Charm Him? That was possible. The poet had Done just that. She had witnessed...
by phillipw | Jul 6, 2020 | DE, DI, EU, HA, LO, OR
Did We Really Think that They Would Give Her Body to Him? Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse Eurydice was dead. Come on. Just soul Is all she was by then. So why would he Expect some wonder from the deepest hole Of anywhere, that...
by phillipw | Jul 5, 2020 | DI, GO
Before We Brought Them Down Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ~ Exodus 20:4 When gods become mere figures, they are not Gods anymore. They slip to being oil On canvas, words on pages, poems caught In scrolls and codexes. Gods used to roil Around in...
by phillipw | Jul 1, 2020 | AN, DE, DI, FU, PO
Centuries before Sappho Praised Men and Women Pre-echoes of that verse, ancient Greek In poetry, go back so far that lost Verbs, Indo-European ones, can almost squeak Through Sappho. It is like they are embossed Behind the papyrus and her inked lines Were...
by phillipw | Jun 4, 2020 | AG, DI, GR, SA, SO
The Central Singularity The blood of sadness is reality. The real stands far away from bloodless veins And not in shadows. No duality As Zarathustra saw it swells or strains Inside the marrow of the universe. Inside its bones where quantum physics seethes The...
by phillipw | May 28, 2020 | CH, DI, GA, LO, MA, Ta
July 14, 1790 The rain slopped on le Champ de Mars so hard It was as if the air had disappeared. For this great morn the bishop gave up card- And dicing-table addiction. Revered By no one as a priest, lame Talleyrand Approached the Mass in front of...
by phillipw | May 22, 2020 | DI, FO, TW, WO
Twinned They dig to make foundations for a steel And tall glass building, but then come upon Rock hardened claw prints and a dragon heel Bone. Eons held in darkness of the dawn Of death (which we call life) rear up in stone- Made stillness. We encounter...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | CH, DI, GO, ST
TRUTH: The Notice Board Was Blank Today, as Blank as Death Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem I passed again that notice board today, The one displaying clever Christian quips That used to make me want to...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | AR, DI, GO, PR, UN
Imagine How Much Like a Man’s Shaved Armpit Allah Would be without Mohammad Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem No matter who the god is, he needs men To help. He needs the prophets to deploy Their fiery...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | AL, AN, DI, GO, JE, ME
Some readers may find part of this pair offensive. If you might be offended, do not read these sonnets, please. “The Men of Ancient Hellas” and “Exodus 34:14”— a pair of sonnets Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem...
by phillipw | May 18, 2020 | DI, EM, PO
Long Ignored Marks in her Poems Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The love-vased Emily put dashes in The gnomes she gave as poetry. She packed Them full of other blooms and roots, like sin For instance,...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | DI, ET, FR, LA, MA, MI, MO
The Best Kind of Friend Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “ ‘Happy is the man who has dear children and sound horses and hunting hounds and a friend abroad…’ Solon, F23 (West)” ~ Robin Lane Fox,...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | DI, EM, HU, PO
A Buzzing Probe in Deep-throat Nectar Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “Early poetry finds its stories and then finds ways of remembering them.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 8 “Helen Hunt Jackson...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | CH, CO, DI, OE
Red Cultural Revolution M modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “And arte made tung-tide by authoritie” ~ William Shakespeare, sonnet 66 (1609 Quarto) The landscape of the Chinese world, with art...
by phillipw | May 14, 2020 | DI, RO, TY
Robin Redbreast Rex Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem A recent scientific study found That birds are dinosaurs. These creatures are Not merely cousins of those monsters bound For mass extinction. That...
by phillipw | May 13, 2020 | AN, BO, DI, GA, GO, GR, HE
Inner Sanctums of Hole-iness Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The gods loomed more than superstars do now. The gods were more like legendary fire Behind a gilded curtain. They would plough A lad or...
by phillipw | May 13, 2020 | DI, FR, GO, PS, Uncategorized
We Need More Enlightened Priests and Priestesses than Psychotherapists Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ernst-men-shall-know-nothing-of-this-t00336 The gods become...
by phillipw | May 10, 2020 | BU, DI, EM, EZ, JO, KE, KH, OM, OR, PE, PO, RA, RO, SA
The Bones of Orpheus, the Hair of Keats Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem If we collected poets’ body parts And put them in glass cases, would the world Adore them there like saints? Pickled hearts Of...
by phillipw | May 4, 2020 | AN, DI, GR
Nuances in Curves “The Diadoumenos” in Daniel Schwartz, Metamorphoses/Greek Photographs, Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 1986 The light falls, slant. It falls in shadowed, dim, And subtle patches. It is like the gods Who sometimes hide...
by phillipw | Apr 29, 2020 | CR, DI, GO, TR
“Work of the Father of Glory” ………. — “weork Wuldor-Faeder” ……………~ Cædmon, “Cædmon’s Hymn” Ideals, those wonders that are perfect, come From only one perfection. Like begets Its like, its offspring, that proceeding from...
by phillipw | Apr 26, 2020 | AU, DI
Ever and Always Death is Their Final Pathetic Option “It is therefore necessary to give orders, not only to poets,but also to all artists and craftsmen, that they should portray the image of goodness in their works and avoid everything that is ugly and bad…”. ~...
by phillipw | Apr 20, 2020 | DE, DI, PE
Coco Chanel Just Didn’t Get It, Did She? Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The peonies grow larger as they move Towards death. They grow as blowsy as a whore Dressed up for some man’s fantasy. They...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | DI, GO
Condescending When humans make a God more human, we Make God less God. A God or Goddess falls Uzzah struck dead by God Like Dagon when we dress divinity In ways we know. The Gods should have their halls In separate spheres from ours and filled with fires...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | DI, GO, TR
Bow Down Thine Ear Gods used to be transcendent, far beyond, Above, away, unreachable on cliffs Too high to scale. We, humans, were so fond That we imagined Gods behind white whiffs Of mists in sacred precincts set aside By...
by phillipw | Apr 18, 2020 | DI, GO
Don’t Be Fooled The gods’ eyes, even when the gods are turned Away, are staring at us. Egypt’s gods Are set askance. Mortal sins are discerned By monumental eyes. Temple facades Are covered with sly looks from faces sloped Away and sideways angles...
by phillipw | Apr 15, 2020 | AE, AP, DI, ES
Volcanic Balance Cleanliness is what we need in the art, In music, and in poetry. The heats Of passion and the pulsing of the heart And other organs, lungs, are best when beats Become subdued by breezy parts of mind, The temperate regions. Coolness enters in...
by phillipw | Apr 13, 2020 | DI, GO
Lost God “like the gods whose powers fade as they are carted off from their landscapes and dialects and universalized” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 13 When God becomes too universal, he Is lost. He fades, Narcissus on a pool Too broad. A fuzziness...
by phillipw | Apr 6, 2020 | BA, DI, EM
Little Blues Packets Thomas Wentworth Higginson reported Dickinson’s comments about sweets in a letter to his wife: “‘People must have puddings’ this [was said] very dreamily, as if they were comets—so she makes them” (L342a)...
by phillipw | Apr 6, 2020 | DI, LO
Some Keep a Glossolalia Sabbath (or Xenolalia Really Since Every Soul is Born into This One Natural Religion) “….. “Dickinson wrote that ‘While others go to Church, I go to mine, for are you not my Church, and have we not a Hymn that no one knows but...
by phillipw | Apr 5, 2020 | AM, BA, DI
Slanted Raising Agents When Emily abandoned schoolwork, she Assumed the baking in her family home. She turned away from the formality Of thinking of philosophers. Her dome Became the kitchen ceiling. Still, the view Outside that house took in the graveyard...
by phillipw | Apr 2, 2020 | DI, PI, ST
Annie Dillard Will Be 72 Tomorrow For Chuck This Sunday Annie Dillard, that clear mind And mystic, will be twelve and three score years. She saw, she saw, and wrote about when blind Eyes saw as if the music of the spheres Became as visible to them as we See blue and...
by phillipw | Mar 12, 2020 | DI, WA
Royal Reveries I never daydreamed I would be like Di, Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, Or live to be The Queen, or even try To be unhappy with love that impales A woman’s guts with unfaithfulness. (See The Husband Prince’s.) Overhearing on The...
by phillipw | Mar 3, 2020 | CO, DA, DI, LO, RO
eatrice Portinari In fear consume my heart. The flames you cause Inside it and around it should spark fright Because their fierceness ought to give you pause. Be brave, though. Let your mouth and heart find might To overcome the flame-shaped, tongue-shaped dread....
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | DI, EM, JO, KE
Unfinished Symphonies All lives are incomplete, not just the life Of Keats—or Emily in Amherst locked In circumstance. Chance wields the palette knife And even genius finds its choices balked By limitations of the oil paints That fate provides. The colors on...
by phillipw | Jan 26, 2020 | BA, DI
[I suspect that few people who know anything about the wine and party god, Dionysus/ Bacchus, and the female Bacchanalian worship of him, know that he was a god of prophecy as well, sufficiently respected to share prophesying duties with Apollo at the cave of Delphi.]...
by phillipw | Jan 7, 2020 | DI, PI
The Pilgrim Prophet Speaks Obliteration is the main command, The prime requirement of posterity; A universal death the first command, A total need is this austerity. Ten billion coral polyps have to die And forty trillion tentacles succeed Them on the ocean floor. A...
by phillipw | Jan 3, 2020 | AG, DI, LO
Its Message Like the Ring of Fire in an Annular Solar Eclipse Made by a Vivid Orb https://images.app.goo.gl/65cFVxwAkgtHNunF6 What is our planet but a little sphere Of blue, peculiar in the black of space, A blue embracing greens and orange, here And there the...
by phillipw | Dec 30, 2019 | DI
Crossbreed Charlatan The ex-Hippie, who became a Yuppie By selling New Age snake oil on the Web, An ageing Old English Sheepdog puppy, Whose fur and ethics, jointly on the ebb, Is now a man who’s mostly pathetic From any point of view. HIs thinning hair Is grizzled...
by phillipw | Dec 30, 2019 | DI, MA
Just Married * A silvery foil piece of confetti, Much larger than the usual size of This litter, waits there making its petty Claim. Subtly it doesn’t allude to love Where it fell, trapped between the cobblestones Outside the Guildhall wedding factory...
by phillipw | Dec 25, 2019 | DI, DN
Another Tree A spring tree drifts a blizzard from its life Through April air. This snowstorm blends the sun With floating fluff and white. The world is rife With hope again on this Good Friday. Shun Old winter’s frozen hair and all it bodes. Think...
by phillipw | Dec 11, 2019 | DI, GO
Leviticus 11:19 I’m really tempted–ain’t you?–to eat bats. I mean, they’d be so succulent with all Those bugs they’ve munched, more delicate than rats On palate, right? Yep. Those fly-flavored, small Bones inside...
by phillipw | Oct 16, 2019 | DI, PI
It’s not Much of a Stretch to Say Annie Dillard Reveals that Life = Death Who doesn’t have a fantasy that’s dark? It comes up from the undergrowth like slime Or other fungi. It’s the basic quark That psyches stretch out from. It bides its time. Some night it...
by phillipw | Sep 26, 2019 | DI, FR, NI
“One Soul in Bodies Twain” and Diaghilev’s “one in private life” The ocean of men’s friendships spreads too vast For those who think about it to presume To use taxonomies which tend to cast One sinkered net across love’s waves and spume, One flaring circle that...
by phillipw | Sep 23, 2019 | DE, DI, GO, HE, MY
Translucent Demigods The heroes of the past are god-like strong. Their loins are near pellucid in their power And beauty. Irridescent thighs are long In loveliness of maleness as they tower Above their plinths. These calves and biceps glow With inner force as marble...
by phillipw | Aug 19, 2019 | AE, AN, BE, DI, ES, GR
Contemplation and Adoration He seems contemplative, his shadowed face So meditative that his beauty turns Away from us. He seems to fill more space Than marble ever could. His presence burns Through thousands of male years. The darkness all Around him is defeated. ...
by phillipw | Aug 6, 2019 | DI
For Pati I look upon my life like Disneyworld. In Disney’s realm the days are sunny stark, Or when it rains the wigs still stay stiff, twirled In spite of the humidity. The park In evening’s brilliant, too, since Klieg lights blare Away what darkness that sneaks in...
by phillipw | Feb 22, 2019 | DI
When Emily abandoned schoolwork, she Assumed the baking in her family home. She turned away from the formality Of thinking of philosophers. Her dome Became the kitchen ceiling. Still, the view Outside that house took in the graveyard stones Of Amherst death. At...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2019 | DI
‘Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the “deepening menace” of death, especially the deaths of those who were close to her. When Sophia Holland, her second cousin and a close friend, grew ill from typhus and died in April 1844, Emily was...