by phillipw | Sep 27, 2023 | CO, GA, LO, PI, RO, SA, SI, ST, TE, Uncategorized
Harlequin in Guise of Tuberculosis Hovering When love is played in luscious settings, clowns Are needed. Sad or comic they can be But never tragic, really, dressed in gowns That do not give the game away. We see Them loving like doom’s humans, threatening clown Just...
by phillipw | Jun 21, 2021 | CA, CH, FA, IN, PI, PR, RE, RO, SU
Miraculous Bunkum The minds of pilgrims plod along because They lack the gifts required to see without A relic. Hunkered there inside its gauze Of cloth of gold as if in holy pout, It waits for priests to open up its box Or gate, the reliquary encrusted with ...
by phillipw | Jan 13, 2021 | AE, BE, BU, ES, PI, TE
Peace that Passeth Understanding Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem So no kuraki yo woshizuka naru botan kana The garden is dark In the night, and quiet The peony. ~ Shirao The garden, dark with...
by phillipw | Nov 24, 2020 | A, CL, ED, EN, MU, NO, PE, PH, PI
“Orpheus with his lute made trees” Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem For Philippe Entremont What use is music lacking fingers, strings, And tremolo, the purity of voice Of flute in Grieg’s concerto,...
by phillipw | Sep 14, 2020 | AN, BR, CH, DA, DI, PI, RO, WI, WO
All’s Right with the World Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “Nature … in the very act of labouring as a machine is also sleeping as a picture.” Canon J. B. Mozely, University Lectures, sermon on...
by phillipw | Sep 9, 2020 | CU, GR, MO, PA, PI
When Voices are Replaced by Squared Up Bars A watercolor, or some paintings made Of oils, or photographs in black and white Are all like Cubist art but with truth’s blade, Not brush. The forms, the shadows, and the light In images of island Greece, are grand...
by phillipw | Sep 9, 2020 | GH, LO, ME, PH, PI
Some are Even Stored in a Sealed up Barrel in a Garden Shed The family albums brim with pictures held In off-white stasis turning yellow, stained With busy carelessness. They have been quelled By years of disregard. The snaps, constrained Inside the pages, huddled,...
by phillipw | Jul 20, 2020 | AN, AR, DE, DO, IM, JE, MU, OL, OR, PI, PO
Πιερία Pieria Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Pieria was laid with plains and peaks, The highest one Olympus, when the gods Set forth the world. Poseidon’s seashore speaks And gives...
by phillipw | Jul 12, 2020 | BE, EY, LI, PI, TH
Pindar on Theoxenus The poet Pindar focuses on love Derived from burning rays from flashing eyes Of young Theoxenus. They are above All others. Love in any other guise Is dimness at its best. The sun can melt The wax of bees, can sting it with its heat....
by phillipw | Jul 5, 2020 | AN, AT, BO, CA, CL, CO, CY, HE, IS, PI, SA
Treasures from the Wreck of the Unrecoverable Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse “Athenaeus quotes more than ten thousand lines of verse in it, many not preserved or attested elsewhere.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets Ten...
by phillipw | May 27, 2020 | CH, ET, HU, PA, PI
Pifferari at Eton “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” The young mind loves to wander. Even though It lives at Eton, it will fly to Rome, The Rome of Christmastime. His fancies flow: The boy would wonder at this spire, that dome, And...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | PI
The Pike Essence is beauty. Motion says essence Is beauty, but it lives in stasis too In Keats’ ode. In static incandescense, As in painfully imagined blue Sky higher than lowing sacrifice, The heifer in her fatal garlands lives Eternally. Yet beauty...
by phillipw | May 19, 2020 | AB, HE, PI
Abelard and Heloïse Illuminated When Abelard was my age, he was dead. I think he would have lived eternally If he had known he’d be stiff as French bread Flutes, as sticks of it dressed infernally, When painted in the Roman de la Rose In red and orange...
by phillipw | May 14, 2020 | DE, PI, SW
Wonder Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem If you had never seen a swan before And suddenly one glided into view, That instant would be like an open door To white and winged epiphany. The true...
by phillipw | May 12, 2020 | BR, PI
Bristlecone Longevity Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Photo: lightrainproductions.com/BristleconePine. The beauty of the tree is not how old, Indeed how ancient in its gnarling now, Not in its...
by phillipw | May 3, 2020 | AP, HU, OR, PI, PO, TO
The Tortoise Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “Other poems by Apollinaire relate to Orpheus, for example, ‘The Tortoise,’ whose shell—a gift from Apollo—provided the frame of his lyre.” ~...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | PI
The Modern Art Market Grotesquely Distorted: “Seated Woman in Blue Dress” Sells for $45 Million If I were burdened with a lover who Looked crooked like this woman (woman?), I Would go as twisted as Picasso. Blue Lips, though, are what I’d paint to help me fly Away...
by phillipw | Apr 2, 2020 | DI, PI, ST
Annie Dillard Will Be 72 Tomorrow For Chuck This Sunday Annie Dillard, that clear mind And mystic, will be twelve and three score years. She saw, she saw, and wrote about when blind Eyes saw as if the music of the spheres Became as visible to them as we See blue and...
by phillipw | Mar 27, 2020 | PI
Piss Christ (1987) You know those labels in museums by The items on display and in the art Exhibits. Do you think they’re being sly Sometimes? The curators seem to impart The barest minimum. They’re virgins who Give off the palest pheromones. You can’t...
by phillipw | Jan 7, 2020 | DI, PI
The Pilgrim Prophet Speaks Obliteration is the main command, The prime requirement of posterity; A universal death the first command, A total need is this austerity. Ten billion coral polyps have to die And forty trillion tentacles succeed Them on the ocean floor. A...
by phillipw | Oct 16, 2019 | DI, PI
It’s not Much of a Stretch to Say Annie Dillard Reveals that Life = Death Who doesn’t have a fantasy that’s dark? It comes up from the undergrowth like slime Or other fungi. It’s the basic quark That psyches stretch out from. It bides its time. Some night it...
by phillipw | Aug 28, 2019 | PI
Piano . . . Softly Gone Away Pianos disappeared. They evanesced So silently we did not even know That they were fading. Women acquiesced In this demise and men let silence grow, Or, rather, stereos and CDs filled The space of ivory keys with black ones in Between. ...
by phillipw | Aug 13, 2019 | PI, PU
Near Enough He’s almost beautiful, his shoulders big Enough, but not remarkable, his nose A handsome size, his hair thick as a wig Some balding man might buy, and in repose His face is solemn, not some pretty thing. The upper eyelids are as dark in tone As if...
by phillipw | Jul 12, 2019 | PI, TH
Theoxenos of Tenedos A happy legend sets his [Pindar’s] death in the theatre, in the arms of Theoxenos of Tenedos, for whom he had written a dazzling, unambiguously erotic encomium.[….] Pindar was eighty, dry kindling. The flame of desire burst forth and...