by phillipw | Jan 29, 2024 | CH, FO, HE, ME, SA, UN
No, Not Really The Christ will not ascend to heaven while One sinner screams in hell or close His gates. This absolute is known, or, if not, vile That Gospel truth of love since hellfire waits Forever and forever forcing God, Omniscient, to feel the...
by phillipw | Dec 13, 2023 | CH, FO, SE
Deceived Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Long past, when souls were young, yes, even souls And never mind our bodies, packaged truth Was taught to us in Bible class. Controls...
by phillipw | Jan 2, 2023 | FO, PA
Stone-crafted Cyphers of Fact The earliest of flowers of course were doomed As flowers have always been and always will Be, destined for their petal deaths, each groomed By drought, or flood, or mold. They wait until A fire comes by and kills them, butterflies As...
by phillipw | Dec 16, 2022 | FO, Uncategorized, WI
“Tarry,” is Spring’s Command Yet if we grieve, the spring that blossoms will Not come as wishes quick or slow will leap. The grief of spring will hasten just the spill Of cherry blossoms. Spring will only creep Back when its universe returns again. Our grieving...
by phillipw | Oct 5, 2022 | FO, HA, SA, SI, Ta, WO, WW
The Fox Hunter Flushes Out the Fritzies Single-handedly with Bayonet and with the Same Fingers that Wrote His Poetry Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem He loved his poetry and music, such Like things,...
by phillipw | Mar 8, 2022 | BR, DE, FO, Ho, RU
Denham and Truth Unveiled, Brown Hair, Sonnet Blue Eyes; the Purple and Black Cap of Rupert’s and Denham’s School House The black and purple fell away. He knocked The cap for fun but also so that he Could see his hair. The light on it so shocked Him that it made a...
by phillipw | Mar 7, 2022 | BR, CH, FO, GA, LA
Charles Lascelles Remembered Imagine that an English boy loved you The most of all — and everyone thought he Was gorgeous…even straight men took the view That he was stunning. Reckon that a scree Of years goes tumbling by and both are gone, Both...
by phillipw | Oct 4, 2021 | FO, PO, SO
Half a Thousand Years from Now Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “The harp that once through Tara’s halls” Messi and Neymar HUG Each Other After Argentina’s Win | Copa America...
by phillipw | Aug 10, 2021 | CO, FO, FR, WI
Advice for Living Do life the way a worker honeybee Approaches living, but without the fault Of filling life without wild liberty. Stretch up. Attend to life as if pole vault Maneuvers at their height were done without The flexing strength that...
by phillipw | May 21, 2021 | FO, SE
Painting by Numbers The largest parts are numbered with a plain 1, meaning I should use the color of Your skin in parts without the darker stain Of body hair—or nipples made for love. Much darker areas are shown by 2, Those parts where tufts of nearly...
by phillipw | Dec 13, 2020 | CH, CR, FO, GO, RE
Godly Fluids God lives where time is an instruction, since Eternity requires a teacher doomed To death. Divinity can never wince Unless his palms and arches are consumed By pierce of nails to agony, are torn As gravity drags down the flesh, and rips...
by phillipw | Oct 11, 2020 | FO, JU, ME, PU, RE
Mercy Tempts, Too Late Redemption of a tragedy by facts Is not enough. To gather them and write Them out slinks, paltry. Call up pulsing acts But they are lost if they are in the plight Of scholarship. Recording them is not Enough. To put them in the rites of...
by phillipw | Oct 10, 2020 | FO, HE, ME, SI, ST
Frozen Heaven and Hot Hues Hell Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem When I am dead, my secrets will be turned To frost up on a pane, up in the New Jerusalem, or maybe will be burned In stained glass down...
by phillipw | Oct 4, 2020 | FO, RE
Forgiveness You kill a man. He can’t forgive you. God Steps in. He can’t forgive you. That would be Too easy. Murdered meat beneath the sod Is munched away by worms. Once murdered he Is able as a rotten burger to Give grace. His wife, his lover,...
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 | Jul 11, 2020 | FO, MA
Masculine Rhythms and Forms Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem How formal were the Greeks in ancient verse, The oldest voices most of all, the blind One, Homer, and then Hesiod. Disperse All thoughts of...
by phillipw | Jul 7, 2020 | CO, FO, PO, TR
Formal Poetry against Free Verse Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Plato in “inventing some extraordinarily powerful images of his own” came up with “notably the poet as Corybant”. ~ Penelope...
by phillipw | May 24, 2020 | AR, FO, HE, LO, PH, PR, QU
Arcachon, Summer, 1923, White-Blond Hair “quite too adorable for words, a perfect pet, so grown up & speaks quite a lot & uses grand phrases. He is the sturdiest little boy I have ever seen & I can’t say he is spoilt.’ ~ Louise, Queen of Sweden,...
by phillipw | May 22, 2020 | FO, LO, LU, PO, PR
Words without Song: a Sonnet [This sonnet sticks to all the rules for a sonnet except that it is laid out on the page as if it were five paragraphs of prose.] Is love a spate of rhyming in the veins? Or is it even less, a bit of plot (inside a thousand paperbacks)...
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 21, 2020 | AN, FO, PO
Two Sides of One Channel, Sea, or Ocean Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem A strand, another strand, two banks of one Wide river separate — but offer more. Exotic poetry entails a sun Unseen until the...
by phillipw | May 21, 2020 | FO, RE, SA, WH
February Fox Last night the fox we feed in bowls behind Our house came just at twelve. His long, thick tail Was bushier than last time and defined By flakes that fell and fell within the veil Of cold for whitest hours. He, taking out His chunks of chicken one...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | BA, CO, FO, GA, JE, LU, MU
Foucault Addresses Barraqué After his Death Invisible inside sapphiric blue, Pale beauty was the hidden man. Your need To hide–conceal yourself, seek to subdue All revelation of your soul, impede Not only others but your mouth and hand From searching out your...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | BA, FO, GA, Ho, JE, LO, MI
Barraqué Breaks Off Their Love The breaking off of love is not a small Affair. It’s not like breaking off a limb That’s hanging from a tree. It’s not at all Like breaking off the singing of a hymn Because the practice isn’t going right. It’s more like sacrilege,...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | BA, FO, GA, Ho, JE, LO, MI
Julian the Apostate Proclaimed Emperor Near Notre Dame Cathedral Mais où sont les neiges d’antan! ~ François Villon In 1952 Jean wrote his first Great opus. Barraqué of Notre Dame Became the lover with a champagne thirst For Foucault. After that,...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | BE, DE, FO, SH
Death Be Now Proud: A Highly Articulated Shrimp as Gem Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The lighting strikes, extreme in angle, from Above and glints from it a glory, gold And glowing. It’s as if it is...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | FO, GR, IM, MO, SE
Vacuum Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem His father died and Tony’s body dried Up, its oases withering to dunes Of numbness. Something shriveled deep inside. Bright pools of sexuality are...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | CH, FO, RH, SP
2451 Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem I re-arranged my china. England failed While I was doing that. The team was young As we’d been told ad nauseam. They paled To losers, though. I...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | CL, FO, PO, TR
Ars Poetica “The word ‘classic’ itself . . . derives from the Latin word classicus which referred to recruits of the ‘first class’, the heavy infantry in the Roman army. The ‘classical’, then, is ‘first class’, though it is no longer heavily armoured.” ~...
by phillipw | May 16, 2020 | FO, SE
Seventh-day Adventist Christianity as It Was Practiced at Forest Lake Academy, Maitland, Florida, in the mid-1960s: Eight Sonnets (an Imperfect Number) in a Sexquence I Degueulasse At first they pulled Paul’s shirt up to his tits And slapped him on his...
by phillipw | May 13, 2020 | CA, FO
Prospero Protecting his Hoard My kitty growls when he is given food He loves. He can’t control himself. Nope. He Curmurs and hisses. Really he is rude To those who feed him, goes into a spree Of crude expletives, hunkers down and grabs A mouthful just in case I...
by phillipw | May 13, 2020 | FO, PO, TR
Beowulf as Instruction for Living Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem If only life, our stuttered lives, were like Sestinas or like Anglo Saxon lines Of poetry, each unseen ghostly spike Of caesuras that...
by phillipw | Apr 15, 2020 | FO
Middle-class, Clean, and Not Our teachers disappear. They mostly fade Entirely into wings beside our stage Like actors with bit parts. They enter shade And deeper darkness. Our minds turn the page And most of them are gone forever. Few Remain as vivid as they were at...
by phillipw | Feb 25, 2020 | DR, FO, ME
Mind Cankers “the realm of forgetting, that overcrowded land’ ~ Donna Leon The kingdom of forgetfulness is large, Much larger than the empire of memory. Forgetting is the way that humans charge Ahead. Our histories are just the quay That once great...
by phillipw | Jan 27, 2020 | FO
Death Be Now Proud: A Highly Articulated Shrimp as Gem The lighting strikes, extreme in angle, from Above and glints from it a glory, gold And glowing. It’s as if it is a-hum With lustres of the richest hue and bold In purest warmth. The sandstone it is...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | FO, RE
The Fox Last night the fox we feed in bowls behind Our house came just at twelve. His long, thick tail Was bushier than last time and defined By snow that had been falling in the veil Of winter for white hours. He took out His chunks of food and one...
by phillipw | Nov 10, 2019 | FO
Another Kind of Diversity A slightly fleshy football thug looks out At us between a scarf and baseball cap. As veiled as Muslim women, he’s a lout. His tit is flabby and he looks like crap. Between concealing cloth across his face And shirt tied round the waist of...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | BA, FO
La Musique de Sade The mathematics of your music were combined With jouissance, jolts of physics known as sound. Your love and compositions were aligned With calculations and the most profound Depressions, melancholia and drink—...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | BA, FO, SE
The Origin of the Dead Sea The music sears, romantically intense, As well it might because it is a sea On fire. It is a sparseness that is dense With utteration of severity. The darkest wine dark ocean set to flame Sings out like pain’s eternity in time. It is an...
by phillipw | Jul 29, 2019 | FO
February Fox Last night the fox we feed in bowls behind Our house came just at twelve. His long, thick tail Was bushier than last time and defined By flakes that fell and fell within the veil Of cold for whitest hours. He, taking out His chunks of chicken one by...
by phillipw | Jul 13, 2019 | BA, FO
Foucault Addresses Barraqué After his Death Invisible inside sapphiric blue, Pale beauty was the hidden man. Your need To hide—conceal yourself, seek to subdue All revelation of your soul, impede Not only others but your mouth and hand From searching out your...
by phillipw | Jul 13, 2019 | BA, FO, NI
Men Lying Apart And where do you three lie now, Barraqué, Foucault, and Nietzsche? You have been removed. One lies in Vendeuvre, one far away In Trélévern, as if life disapproved And did a deal with hell. Trapped Nietzsche lies In such a tiny village that...
by phillipw | Jul 13, 2019 | BA, FO
Julian the Apostate Proclaimed Emperor Near Notre Dame Cathedral Mais où sont les neiges d’antan! ~ François Villon In 1952 Jean wrote his first Great opus. Barraqué of Notre Dame Became the lover with a champagne thirst For Foucault. After that, Jean...