by phillipw | Sep 4, 2022 | CA, GA, JU
Elio and Oliver During and After How meaningless the road ahead is when It doesn’t lead to him and love. The stretch Is straight, or slightly bent, when two young men, Who stepped outside the hedging, made a sketch Of other love, and parted, then are...
by phillipw | May 4, 2022 | AE, BE, ES, HE, JU, LI, MA, PH
Junge Männer, a Sonnet Sequence on the photographs in Herbert List’s Junge Männer [Each sonnet is about at least one of the sonnets in List’s book. Before the title of each sonnet is the number of the photograph the poem is about, as in (#1). Often (or...
by phillipw | Feb 21, 2022 | CH, JU, RE, RI, SO
Inner, not Outer Rightness 12 Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them … , with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and...
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 | Aug 9, 2021 | BU, CH, JU, RE, SH
Judas as a Cannibal Interpreting Holiness Korea sends a priestly man, a monk, To worshiping Japan. He preaches that The animism of their bones is drunk, More like a drunken mouse or bat, And will remain so till they realize That silent Shintō gods are reflections Of...
by phillipw | Aug 9, 2021 | GA, GU, HE, IS, JU, LA, PA, TR, ZE
Pitifully Bulging with Restraint The ancient myths refrain from giving hot Exactness to sex swollen loves. The gate Of Troy is breached, but Homer leaves out taut Male flesh in ram and slam of lust in spate Between Queen Helen’s legs. When Zeus rapes up Inside...
by phillipw | Jul 6, 2021 | AE, BE, ES, IN, JU
White and White and Blue and Blue Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Some otherwhere the snow is lingering on The ground between the bark of oaks or pines, Perhaps beneath a peak awaiting dawn. Mount...
by phillipw | Jun 10, 2021 | CH, JU, MY, RE
144,000 Thrones Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem My childhood little church, that concrete block One painted white with ziggurat-like face, Was filled with mystic preacher salesman talk So...
by phillipw | Jun 9, 2021 | GA, JU, LE, SW, ZE
The Age of the Gods Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The age of gods remains the same, a still Forever. As they were, they ever are, And ever will be, in a changeless, chill, Transparent medium. ...
by phillipw | Apr 3, 2021 | CA, FR, JU, PH, PS, SI
Panicky Purity The phantoms of the heart and brain are drugs From soul and not from science. They are like Some sort of dreamlike but effective plugs Created for our therapy. A dyke Holds back the floods… and heart holds back the brain And rigid...
by phillipw | Mar 6, 2021 | DE, FR, JA, JU, LI, MA, NE, PS
Art for Farts’ Sake The monstrous lack of any sense in art Was followed by the monstrous lack of sense In thinking and philosophy . The part Of Derrida and Deconstruction’s dense Offensive springs to mind. A crazed theory Of this and that philosopher in turn...
by phillipw | Jan 13, 2021 | AE, BE, BU, ES, GE, HI, Ho, IS, JU, TR
Vicars of Esthetics Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Triangular like God the flowers are shown Against a boring green of lawn. Arrayed In righteous revelation now full blown Their holiness of...
by phillipw | Dec 29, 2020 | BL, CH, IN, JU, RE, SA, SI, ST, VI
Inspiration Our days and nights are blind like Homer, blind And seeing, deep and wide, but still inept. Time carries us through life but like a mind Confused through madness. Life remains adept At fraud, poetically and just with scales Upon its...
by phillipw | Dec 26, 2020 | BO, BR, CO, DR, EX, GE, IO, JU, VU
Victors in Dream Geography Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem We want to conquer dreamers’ landscapes, sweep Through them triumphantly, explore each dream And make it ours. We want to fathom deep...
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 | Oct 22, 2020 | AN, CH, DA, GR, HE, IS, JU, PH, RE
Darwin and Heraclitus Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “Homer should be turned out of the canon and whipped. He was wrong in saying : ‘Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!’ ...
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 5, 2020 | AL, GO, JE, JU, LI, ZE
Lightning Gods Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The lightning rods for timelessness, we wait For sly eternity to strike. We wait in time Yet immortality aims to castrate Or drown us. ...
by phillipw | Sep 16, 2020 | HE, JE, JU
Veiled Olympus and the Heavenly Sanctuary, with His Camouflaging Masculine Vestments God pours from jars of bounty in his halls, The jars of pleasure and of sorrow. Both. We men and women make our chorused calls From earth below. We call in prayers for growth Of...
by phillipw | Sep 15, 2020 | BI, CH, DE, GO, IS, JU, KO, LE, OL, QU, RE
Dead Sea Salt, not Caves “Many soul-destroying things/In folded tablets” ~ T. S. Brandreth, The Iliad of Homer, 1816 I know those soul-destroying things, those things In ancient texts on parchment, vellum, or Papyrus, rolled or folded. Suffering...
by phillipw | Jul 13, 2020 | BI, BO, GA, HE, JE, JU, LO, MA, RA, ZE
The next two sonnets may offend some readers. If you think you may be offended, please do not read them. Painless Pleasure: Two contradictory versions of the myth of Ganymede “to be very eager in the pursuit of pleasure is to go hunting for pain…. ...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | EL, JU, MA, MO, Ta
Cleopatras Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, won The love of Roman rulers. Mythic in Her force to ravish first the older one And then seduce the younger man,...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | AD, AU, BO, CA, JO, JU, MA, NA
Modern Improvements I find it faintly droll that Caesar had No clue about Napoleon and Hitler, that Augustus never knew how ultra bad That Mao and Josef Stalin were. How flat Those Caesars would have felt if only they Had known how pipsqueak they would seem compared...
by phillipw | Jan 23, 2020 | JU, MA, ME, SA, VE
Rock and Gas Giants Five planets rise to shine in white and red Above. The springtime sky becomes divine. They all are gods, though one of them is dead, Slaughtered by his son. Night-sky gods align Themselves with nothing. Is this an omen? Astrologers...
by phillipw | Nov 17, 2019 | JU, LI
A Spiritual Reading: I Corinthians 13 What merit does this image have? Why print It in between two strangely moving ones? There is a bit of beauty here, a hint Of dreaminess as well, yet nothing stuns Us. Light and shade and texture form the whole Here. Nothing...
by phillipw | Sep 17, 2019 | JU
An Elevated Viewpoint His nose would plausibly have been all right In ordinary profile, but when viewed From high above (my double-decker height) It was ugly, like Satan had construed Its meaning to a splayed-hoof, gristled shape. The man was cycling, going on his...