by phillipw | Dec 3, 2019 | BI, FR
Sad Substitute Those eyes, that mouth reminded me of Glenn, My friend of forty years now gone. The hair, Though, wasn’t crinkly thick. This specimen Was balding on the top, the strands too spare And thin to be a substitute for my Young man of fourteen...
by phillipw | Dec 2, 2019 | FR, MA, MO
“O mes amis, il n’y a nul ami” “My friends, there is no friend!” Diogenes Laertius has Aristotle cry, Despairing of the chance that theory’s Demand for one who’s more than ally, Gives more than scratch his back and he’ll scratch mine Delight, is more than merely pure,...
by phillipw | Dec 2, 2019 | FR, MA
Best at a Distance Some say that friendship’s realm is nowhere but Nostalgia. Love of man for man exists In regions where the friend is absent, shut Out, exiled, say, or better dead, subsists On mourning, loss, and echoes. Because if He is actually in the...
by phillipw | Dec 2, 2019 | FR, MO
Set Him as a Seal “I give myself more to my friend than draw Him to me”—so says old Montaigne, but long Years after Étienne had died. The flaw Is pretty obvious, right? “Love is strong As death,” another wise man’s song insists, But are we all convinced? ...
by phillipw | Nov 19, 2019 | FR
In Chains and Shackles of the Presumptions of Free Verse The poets who disdain tradition’s forms, Reject the sonnet and the villanelle, Prefer arthritic shapes like tortured corms Or stringy roots that grow from mocking hell To desecrate pure pages with crabbed...
by phillipw | Nov 15, 2019 | FR, KU
You know the sort. They’re usually called Fair weather friends. They’re righteous and they’re good And generous even—if things don’t get balled Up. Each one stores his satin, high-peaked hood Beneath his folded underpants. They give Right...
