by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | LO, RI, RO, VE
Pleasure, Prussian Pain: Verlaine Remembers Arthur’s Eyes Your eyes went blue in through my heart, straight through The blue that was my heart and bored through night, Straight through my night and out into a new Blue dawn, a morn so full of blue and might That...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | LO, RI, RO, VE
Verlaine Conducts the Tribunal: Rimbaud’s Eyes I try to fathom why he has that haze In fluorite eyes. No one can tell. I’ve asked His friends about that gaze. They all go blank. Not one of them when tasked To give interpretation of his black And...
by phillipw | Feb 14, 2020 | RI, VE
Lucien Viotti, Madame Mathilde Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud A wife cannot compete with someone who Has rhymed himself with vacuum. The blank A dead friend leaves behind is perfect blue. The charms a mindless wife can offer rank More like a lukewarm brown contrasted...
by phillipw | Feb 13, 2020 | RI
St. Teresa Magdalene “his sky-blue eyes that come out nearly white in the photographs of the day” ~ Edmund White “cruel light blue eyes” and his “strong red mouth with the bitter fold in it—mysticism and sensuality in spades” ~ Paul...
by phillipw | Jan 27, 2020 | RI, VE
Four Hundred & Twenty Some Odd Days When genius lived in London, English brains Were unaware. When genius loved among Them, drinking gin is what they did. The chains He broke in poetry and sex with tongue And knife and fists, the bindings he destroyed,...
by phillipw | Jan 26, 2020 | RI
Sacerdotal Insects Young Rimbaud kept live lice in special seats Up on his head for one specific need. He didn’t leave’em in his guestroom sheets To cause insult. He needed them to breed There so that, when in passing through the rues De Paris he...
