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...
by phillipw | Oct 31, 2019 | FR
Moveless Blizzard A milder form of beauty is the frost. A snowy landscape is dramatic, stark, And harshly lovely, like bitterness lost In sweetest white, all edged in green and stark Irruptions in the fields or on the hills. But frost makes greens pastel, or...
by phillipw | Oct 30, 2019 | FR, LO, RE
Eleven, that Odd, Unfortunate Number When everything is wrong or slightly wrong, such As sex and love and friendship, all that you can Expect are travesties like using a crutch Pressed into an armpit tumor in a man Endeavoring to walk the world, every part Of it, as...
