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...
