by phillipw | Dec 10, 2021 | DE, FU, PA, SA, VI
Flowers and Men and Fate Palled eons hover in the space between Each falling petal, each palled eon called Eternity or death. These, each one seen As equal, spy themselves as self-same, sprawled Like vileness, black. Each falling petal floats To vacuum. ...
by phillipw | Nov 22, 2021 | FU, SE
Large Luxuries like a King Cobra in His White Sheets Not yachts or mansions in the Highlands. No. Real luxuries rise best in drowse of dreams Or waking dreams. We move our hands down low To rest them on the manliness. It teams With utterness but wakes...
by phillipw | Jul 22, 2021 | CO, ER, FU, PE, SE
Precious Hardness, Precious Black Wood The leopards love the manly flesh of thighs With hair, the humid meat of men. Fangs love The bone of flesh hard maleness sings and size Of satiation that men give. Above These basics, though, the leopards want a feast Of gold...
by phillipw | May 17, 2021 | FU, SE
Spelunking You breathe, then bend. The search began with slick Communication of those probing lips And tongue. It gave a fleshy, snake-like flick Between them and you felt it near your hips While warmth was still there in your mouth. Not quite...
by phillipw | May 14, 2021 | FU, LO, RO, SE
Midas Touch He wants to make his lovers glow like gold, Except that gold is tame. He wants to make them Glow, gold eternity, that makes them scold The lesser beauties. He will lift the hem Of death since it is only thin gold rags And find beyond it...
by phillipw | May 12, 2021 | FU, MA, SE
Star Bursts He doesn’t want to shoot down stars or blast At them at all. He doesn’t think that he Can boost the sky with something better, vast As his desire might be. That French marquis Is not at all his pattern. What he wants To shoot is...
by phillipw | Apr 22, 2021 | FU, IN, LO, SE, UT
Predicted before Midnight We make the world anew at night in bed. I make it in you and you take it in You deeply, and you take it deeper, spread Yourself to take it deeper than the sin That Eve and Adam shared. You take it’s deep And turn it into newness there...
by phillipw | Apr 1, 2021 | CO, FU, PE, SE
Heavenly Bodies Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The sunlight on the moon is sunlight, not Sad moonlight. Get that straight. If I want you, I want you having me inside you, hot, More...
by phillipw | Mar 22, 2021 | DO, FU, RA, SE
Subjugation An inch more deeply in, and you will be The emperor. Has no one told you that? More likely you have learned it as the key To living like the spoiled Persian cat Has learned that biting robins with his fangs Trumps petting by a...
by phillipw | Mar 21, 2021 | FU, HE, SE, ST
The Novelist at the Supermarket Till Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem He looks through men and women and he sees Them not just outwardly but sees inside Them like a CT scan. His heart can tweeze Out...
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 | Mar 20, 2021 | CL, FU, LO, OR, SE
No Separate Peace “. . . it should have been true. So I didn’t argue.” ~ John Knowles, A Separate Peace When we have finished all the passion, sweat, And dripping body fluids; when we reach The pounded climax to that final threat That comes with deep...
by phillipw | Mar 20, 2021 | CL, CU, FU, LO, OR, SE
Spewing in the Depths to Heights, Rule-breaking Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem When I go into you, I know what he Felt up in heaven, Lucifer, in love With liberty, or more love’s anarchy. I know...
by phillipw | Mar 19, 2021 | CL, CO, CU, FU, IN, OR, PE, SE
Priming Your Pump at the Well Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Just one slight push and he slips into you. Unspoken is this love, for who needs love In words when there is love to spew? You want a...
by phillipw | Feb 7, 2021 | AU, FA, FU, MU, Uncategorized
Curve, Raggedness, and Tininess Squared Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The thusness of the mushroom is increased By one orange leaf which falls upon it, so, An autumn colored cloth a Druid priest...
by phillipw | Dec 24, 2020 | CH, FU, JU, MA, MO, RO, RU
Death Sneers Silently at Services We sing to dead ones. That is how we pray. We sing the hymns and requiems. We chant The kaddish and the words of fate. We sway In robes the living wear. The pious rant Which sounds more beautiful than death, unless The timbre is of...
by phillipw | Dec 16, 2020 | AT, FU, LO, RO, SP
That Hot Embrace Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem He cannot ever run or swim without Romance the power in his sinews, sweat, And dreams. He does not let the sunshine doubt His future,...
by phillipw | Dec 15, 2020 | CA, CE, CO, DE, FU, GR, MO, SM, TI, TO
Artless as L. S. Lowry A Rembrandt darkness falls upon us, they And me. I cannot see them now except As figures draped in richest robes. The prey Of time (called death) they’ve worn brocade and slept In sand beneath the ground, each separate plot Concealing...
by phillipw | Oct 5, 2020 | BU, DE, FU, Ho, IL, MA, NE
In Every Culture, that Golden Vanity “I am the cup of Nestor, a joy to drink from” A twelve year old in Magna Graecia lay Inside his tomb. Beside him was a cup Of gold interred there. Wanting to convey Sad hope, his family wanted him to sup From it in afterlife...
by phillipw | Aug 2, 2020 | CO, DE, FU, ME, MO
Rites When undertakers take the body, pimp It up to please its final lover, stretch Its limbs to that position while still limp And use mascara and lipstick to etch A long-time disposition for the lips To welcome death, do hands attempt to call Up...
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 | May 16, 2020 | AU, CH, FA, FU, MO, OA, SP
Skywriting Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The well-shaped maple on the hilltop spreads Its leaves and limbs like rhythmed lines and rhymes. It is a sonnet that in autumn sheds God’s colors...
by phillipw | Apr 15, 2020 | FU, PU
The Luna Moth, the Poet, and Philosopher “Carlotta Capuccino [in her article], ‘Plato’s Ion and the Ethics of Praise,’ takes the . . . view that poetry deploys ‘groundless praise’ and ‘promotes a dogmatic and passive style of life and thought,’ and so is ‘essentially...
by phillipw | Jan 26, 2020 | FU
Pink as Trauma The gardener comes and chops off fuschia flowers We waited months to worship. They were pink, Pale pink and paler white. In shredded showers Their petals fell. He decided to slink Off, leaving us to find the trauma once He’d left. Before...
by phillipw | Jan 8, 2020 | FU, OL
Olimpio Fusco Unconscious of his Needs … An artist’s model does what he is told. Stand there. Sit under that. Now spread that thigh. He doesn’t have to know why he must fold His hips beside a knife or gun. His eye Must look away, to left, or up. Perhaps He...
by phillipw | Jan 7, 2020 | FU, OL, SA, SI
Olimpio Fusco ~ Olimpio Fusco by John Singer Sargent An agony of beauty is this head, His hair, his throat. The shadowed neck alone Is hurtful to the heart. This thoroughbred Has hardly grown his Adam’s apple. Shone In their perfection are the...
by phillipw | Jan 5, 2020 | FU, SE
Self Definition, not the Usual— Opposition to Nostalgia Scito te ipsum I choose to think about my future self Instead of how it was when I was young. My personhood is not on childhood’s shelf, Nor is my personality the rung That I was...
by phillipw | Sep 28, 2019 | FU
Funeral Games Some people marry several times. I tend To want not several weddings but instead To be the subject of various send Offs. I’ll have respective funerals to wed Eternity and me in death. I wish A sober one in black officiated By my brother, and a...