by phillipw | Jan 24, 2023 | CO, LA
A Sort of Living Doubt “A sort of living doubt” ~ John Clare, “The Landrail” Take notice how it walks as if it fears Its foot will step upon a circle in the hell Of Dante. Pacing shy (unlike Shakespeare’s Wide eagle lines) the corncrake...
by phillipw | Dec 13, 2022 | CH, GO, LA, NA, SA
The Lamb “And suddenly there was with the angel a heavenly host saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” ~ Luke 2:14 The lamb looks up and sees a light, a star Or something heavenly, a...
by phillipw | Mar 15, 2022 | BR, CH, GA, Ho, LA, LO, RU
Wider Still and Wider from the Earth “And in that Heaven of all their wish, there shall be no more land, say fish.” ~ Rupert Brooke The fancies of that young one, Rupert Brooke, Were wider than “just” girls and women. He Liked those—and more. The autumn hair that...
by phillipw | Mar 15, 2022 | BR, CH, LA, LO, RU, UN
The Genius of Love and the Jock Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Of course it doesn’t matter that we don’t Know just how beautiful Lascelles was: he Was not a poet. Rupert Brooke was wont To think...
by phillipw | Mar 14, 2022 | BR, CH, LA, LO, RU
Squares and Triangles “male society, cloistered rooms, and the works of the classics” ~ Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolfe A cloistered room can be concocted in An ordinary bedsit. Cambridge rooms Are not required. You sit and rest your chin On loneliness. Love’s...
by phillipw | Mar 14, 2022 | BR, CH, GA, LA, LO, RU, UN
Rugby Love Reduced to Black and White in Cambridge Love That love continued into Cambridge days. One Rugby beauty took another in A frame and kept him in his room to gaze At eyes, at stalwart auburn hair, and chin, Not just in daytime, either, but in nights Of...
by phillipw | Mar 14, 2022 | BE, BR, GA, LA, LO, MA, RO, RU, UN
On the Rubbish Heap of Time . . . The one he loved the most was Charles Lascelles. We have to take Brooke’s word for it that he Was beautiful. As Rugby tower bells Rang out the hours, a passion rhymed with glee Pumped hard inside the future poet, hard...
by phillipw | Mar 13, 2022 | BE, BR, CH, LA, MA, RU
No Need for Mary Magdalene: Robin Lane Fox Reports that One Ancient Source Claimed that Alexander the Great’s Natural Body Odor was Like Perfume The beauty whom we cannot see through years And shrouds of time is one we have no chance Of seeing photos of. Lascelles...
by phillipw | Mar 11, 2022 | BR, CH, LA, RU, UN
Etched Joys, Wretched Joys “Rugby is full of dreary ghosts of dead hopes and remembered joys” ~ Rupert Brooke Lascelles was more than just another love For Rupert. Charles was Rupert’s first love, more Like God’s own “Fiat lux” while high above The chaos of...
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 24, 2021 | AD, AN, GR, JO, KE, LA, ME, OV, SI, SU
On First Looking into Ovid’s Metamorphoses For Adam Meister and Suyash Singh His hand was heart. His heart was hand. The hand Was heart and more. This hand was soul and mind. He learned that there are more than Sabbaths, bland And filled with trifling things like...
by phillipw | Sep 13, 2021 | BR, CH, GA, LA, RU
Rugby Love Reduced to Black and White in Cambridge Love The love continued into Cambridge days. One Rugby beauty took another in A frame and kept him in his room to gaze At eyes, at stalwart auburn hair, and chin, Not just in daytime, either, but in nights Of...
by phillipw | Sep 12, 2021 | BR, CH, GA, LA, LO, RU
Auburn Love Maleness Maleness Maleness The way a twilight in the autumn turns To unsung colors, so the chapel light Inside the service changes from the burns Of orange to a brown with red so slight It slinks away as suns go down. The red Is almost memory, not real,...
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 | Aug 6, 2021 | BI, LA, SK
Music with Percussion Wound In “Bound each to each” ~ William Wordsworth The skylark’s music phrases are a part Of nature’s symphony, but only some Of it. A harmony weighs at the heart Of wide concerns. Some sounds are like a drum. Percussive notes break...
by phillipw | Aug 6, 2021 | BI, LA, SK
Victory Ode The skylark sings. The skylark sings in rain Beside dark woods. It sings as rain falls down Around it. Everywhere is his domain. He sings his way to triumph. Weather’s frown Is useless in his life. The mist comes, so He sings. ...
by phillipw | Aug 6, 2021 | BI, LA, SK
Reverence An ordinary little bird, but, then, He calls like angels fired by Satan, Christ, And Atlas booster engines. Like a wren Though larger, larks are mystically enticed To singing, lilting, praising in the air And carry melodies of hymning...
by phillipw | Aug 4, 2021 | BI, LA, MU, PA, SK
Apassianato The skylark’s struggle is its fluttering Or so it looks. The skylark’s flying seems To be a form of airborne stuttering At best upon on the slightest breezy streams Of air, yet even so near halting moves And swoops predict a victory...
by phillipw | Aug 4, 2021 | BI, LA, MU, SK
A Shimmering Coronet Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Like ripples in the clouds the skylark’s song Strikes ever changing in its slants and shades. Since such a tiny throat could be so strong That it...
by phillipw | Aug 3, 2021 | BI, LA, SK
Microscopic Nearly The three, the island, lark, and farmer ride In smallness in the scene. The island set Within the ocean and constricting tide Is nearly lost in blue. A constant threat Surrounds it, swelling, ebbing ever, though It shores...
by phillipw | Aug 3, 2021 | BI, FA, LA, MU, SK
Cleaving Above Upon the smaller island even there A skylark lives and sings. It lives and sings And rises to the highest heights through air. The rapture of the lark swells up and springs To levitate so far above the farm And farmer that his...
by phillipw | Aug 3, 2021 | BI, LA, PR, SK
Cosmic Encryption Broadcast Wide as Bach The mounting skylark sings the song of world Religions everywhere. The leap from ground To piercing toward the stratosphere is swirled With incandescent notes. The lark has found The meaning of the universe and sets Itself...
by phillipw | Aug 3, 2021 | CO, LA, SK
Coded by Broad Daylight, Lost in Beauty Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Why hide in night, when you can hide in day? God hides in His effulgent, banging light That kills if you should see its...
by phillipw | Aug 2, 2021 | BI, LA
The Longest, Tallest Whole Notes Ever “Seen melodies are sweet but those unseen are sweeter.” The eyeless melody rains down. The sky Seems filled with music—and the space beneath The blue demands the listening grateful eye Should search above the...
by phillipw | May 2, 2021 | FR, LA, UN
Perfection from Perfection “the perfect law of liberty” ~ James 1:25 The law of liberty is that you must Be free. The universe is made by laws Commanding everything from cosmic dust (Between the constellations) thin as gauze Of subatomic particles—to fleets Of...
by phillipw | May 1, 2021 | LA, PR, RE
Perverse Psychology Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem I keep on losing arguments with me. I don’t like losing them with anyone But it’s far worse (a serendipity Unwanted) to face up to...
by phillipw | Dec 26, 2020 | LA, SE, TR
Karen Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem She had a laugh composed of dusky fat. It seemed to earn its way through twilight sound. The laugh was like a husky playful brat Controlling sex...
by phillipw | Dec 7, 2020 | GH, LA
Lack When once your world is gone, you lurk, a ghost, Your own ghost. What would be the use of glows Of warmth when what you loved is lost? Life’s boast, That love, is silent echoes in the throes Of ricocheting vacuum. Not just That love but all else is...
by phillipw | Nov 27, 2020 | AL, CA, LA, LI, MY, SA, ST
Lost Legends Long Before the Vedas and the Iliad Go far enough in time and all becomes Strict mists and stone. Fire circles heard the tales So long forgotten now that tribal drums Are recent evolutions, compared. Trails Do not exist to take us back to spells And...
by phillipw | Oct 29, 2020 | AN, FE, HE, JO, LA, PA, PR, TH, WH, WI, WO
Presence Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The past is never past, is more than ghost Or Undead creature. Passed away the past Is not. It lives within. Its whispered boast Inhabits mental...
by phillipw | Oct 23, 2020 | DI, FR, IN, LA, NI, PH, SY
Playing with Himself and the Piano Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Infernal Recurrence, more like. That Big Mind locked itself up in the bedroom of His hosts. A mad philosophical pig, He banged the...
by phillipw | Jul 19, 2020 | AT, BU, CO, EL, LA, LO, NI, OL, SA, SO, SP, TH, VI
They Loved Sovereignty and Liberty Most “And the Lacedæmonians offer sacrifices to Love before they go to battle, thinking that safety and victory depend on the friendship and those who stand side by side in the battle array. And the Cretans, in their line of battle,...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | DI, ET, FR, LA, MA, MI, MO
The Best Kind of Friend Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “ ‘Happy is the man who has dear children and sound horses and hunting hounds and a friend abroad…’ Solon, F23 (West)” ~ Robin Lane Fox,...
by phillipw | May 17, 2020 | ET, FR, LA, NI
Nietzsche Negation Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Steel repetition trumps. Unnerved before Men’s ecstasy, rosaries cannot deny The urge for semen, chanting still the whore. Adultery invades the...
by phillipw | May 16, 2020 | AU, CO, FA, FI, LA, OX, RE, SP
The Knighthood of the Countryside Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Genteel, the hills of Oxfordshire are clothed With farm fields at their feet, brocades of trees On shoulders and their chests. The...
by phillipw | May 7, 2020 | BO, DR, JO, LA, PA, PH, WE, WH, WI
Recurring, Not Forgotten Florida Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The childhood cosmos that returns in dreams Is full of butter suns, smooth, yellow, bright. The light is not like melting candy creams...
by phillipw | Apr 22, 2020 | JO, LA
The Aroma of Myrrh and the Beloved of John “Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.” ~ John 11:39 (KJV) “he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come...
by phillipw | Feb 17, 2020 | LA, SE
Revelation 12:5 “the snows of yesteryear” Desires denied fill time like Arctic waste, Antarctic nights. Since in eternity These passion are abandoned, they stay chaste Forever. Virginal alternity To life, they lie in deep-freeze space, As...
by phillipw | Jan 23, 2020 | LA
An Early March Morning Near Windsor The calmer tints of colours are the way Of English landscape. Turner got it wrong. He seemed to fail to see the huddled grey That lurks behind the hues, whether in long And sweeping sunsets or in golden views. “The Hay Wain” and...