by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | CH, ST
Chuck on the Topic of the Pain I Caused Him by Leaving Him so I Could Go “Live” in Edinburgh with my Wife “ ’Twould have been much neater if you could have conveniently died.” ~ Charles Randall Stanfield in a letter to Phillip Whidden mailed March 13, 1986 and...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | CH, DE, LO, MO, ST
My Menu in Hades My life is bitter now or it has lost Its flavour, maybe both, because it seems To be a sour fruit that’s sliced and tossed Away. It falls upon a pile of dreams I used to have (or maybe I just guessed Those dreams existed). It’s so hard to prove...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | CH, LO, ST, UN
“From Thy Dead Lips” There’s just a hollowness that has your smell Around it—like an aura of the sins We never did together. This shell, Its fan form, waits, on shores where death begins (If death can righteously be said to mark A start). The light around this...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | CH, LO, ST
Sheer as an Anchorite Sacred to St. Bartholomew He came, a supplicant. His votive flame Was love. He held it up above the black Of curls he worshiped. Purity, not shame, Is what he had to proffer, nothing slack Or stained, because the black was utter. Up He...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | CH, FR, ST, TR
Lament for a Tree Surgeon .. I dip my heart in elegy and write, A pen held firmly by the hand of grief. Encyclopedic is the size and height Of this my undertaking. Turn a leaf Of it forever and my sorrow will Have just begun. A hundred trillion trees Can fall to...
by phillipw | Oct 14, 2019 | CH, ST
Blood’s Bitonality I know that you are heartbeats at my core But more than that my feelings are impure. Are you the syncopation in the score My veins are writing, or are you the cure For music’s failure? Are you maybe meant As perfect rhythm and this harmony...