by phillipw | Mar 18, 2024 | BR, DE, OR, TI
Winged Deer Tongue on a Sunless Tuesday Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Deer tongue leaves The local council mowed the grass along The edge where buses come and go. My scooter drives me past and...
by phillipw | Dec 31, 2023 | NE, OX, PA, TI
Noxymoron The paradox of New Year’s midnight Eves Is ever new and ever old because The endless carries on. The moment cleaves The past from present in unchanging laws And also causes pasts and presents to Cleave hard together changelessly the...
by phillipw | Feb 10, 2022 | AU, ET, SA, ST, TI
Ex Nihilo is a Joke Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “. . .it starts with an empty universe” ~ Stephen Fry, Cosmos, vii An empty universe is paradox. In such a boundless space there’d be no...
by phillipw | Feb 6, 2022 | BR, FL, Ho, MO, TI
A 1950s Florida Day and July 20 and 21, 1969 Winged ants fly From a small house At the foot of Mount Fuji. ~ Buson The clapboard house shines white in afternoon Brevard in sunlight. There in front are green And orange from the flame vine. There’s no moon Above...
by phillipw | Dec 5, 2021 | BE, BR, FL, Ho, OR, TI
Enamel Trees Longing Ago The orange blossoms fill my native place. They fill it every year with white perfume. The scent has piquant yellow at heart’s space, The hearts held out bouquet-like, as a plume On green wing branches where the mockingbird Might...
by phillipw | Aug 10, 2021 | FL, TI
Condemned Mosquito heat envelopes everyone In Titusville and then come clouds pumped out From funnels on the trucks, poison to stun The stings before they reach with pointed snout Their victims. White men and the black ones search Out dark brown...
by phillipw | Aug 5, 2021 | TI, WH, WI
Singing Travels Vast upon Past Waters ~ for Wilma Whidden Sisson, soprano Grandiloquent the blossoms by her lawn Around the back werehidden from the eyes Of neighbors, Petals have a brilliant brawn Of redness, orange of a wide surprise, Hibiscus of a cream-like...
by phillipw | Jul 18, 2021 | ET, TI
A Kite Flies in the Morning, the Afternoon, and the Evening Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The haiku poet seems to think that time Becomes eternity in yesterday. What happened then is part of the...
by phillipw | Jun 18, 2021 | RO, SA, SH, TI
The Weight of Time is Felt Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Some times are felt as weight. The Sabbath of The Jews or Christians settles on the soul Sabbath Day Lake Like Florida’s humidity...
by phillipw | Feb 24, 2021 | EA, GR, MO, TI
Shifting Knowledge “Know thyself” ~ the temple at Delphi The earth is slowing down its turning on Its axis; so it seems, at least. The tides Have been impeding spinning since the dawn Of oceans and the sphere. Our planet rides Through vastest vacuum of...
by phillipw | Dec 15, 2020 | CA, CE, CO, DE, FU, GR, MO, SM, TI, TO
Artless as L. S. Lowry A Rembrandt darkness falls upon us, they And me. I cannot see them now except As figures draped in richest robes. The prey Of time (called death) they’ve worn brocade and slept In sand beneath the ground, each separate plot Concealing...
by phillipw | Dec 5, 2020 | BO, BR, KU, PL, RA, SM, TI
Titusville Spelled KKK “There’s no place like home.” If I were given Judy Garland’s shoes, I wouldn’t click their ruby heels to go To childhood Titusville. I wouldn’t choose The 1950s there where time was slow As Playalinda tides that inched up on The palest...
by phillipw | Jul 16, 2020 | DI, IN, PH, PL, PO, SO, TI
Spells and the Thoughts of Tiresias “Halliwell’s basic argument is that Socrates admits the Book X arguments to be insecure and open to defeat. He calls them ‘spells’ rather than philosophical knowledge, and he asserts that he must use them [those arguments]...
by phillipw | Jul 13, 2020 | AR, IN, MU, NO, PA, PO, TI, TS
Piéria Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “the Muses’ ancient home between the roots of Olympus and the sea; to where ‘Pēneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star’.” ~ F. L....
by phillipw | May 27, 2020 | CH, HU, MU, PA, TI
7/8 II suggest you read this sonnet in tandem with “Prime,” one of the sonnets in the sonnet sequence about Parry in the general Encyclopedia Sonnetica.] “Jerusalem” and “I was glad” have made Us think of him as if he were no more Than...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | CO, PO, TI, TS, VO
The Legends and the Gods, the Victors and Obliterations Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The flow of cosmic history through this mote We call the world has always been a rush, Not slow like muddy...
by phillipw | May 16, 2020 | DE, FA, JE, RO, TI
Jews Made the Roman Fire Attack Worse John Updike in Rabbit at Rest has a Floridian Jew sneer that the proof that the Jews are God’s chosen people is in the fact that He gave them such pathetic enemies. The Romans thought destruction of the Jews, Jerusalem, and their...
by phillipw | Apr 23, 2020 | KU, TI
Kunala and Queen Tishyarakshita His eyes were like the colors of exotic Birds, brighter than the liquid colors of Their irises, becoming hypnotic. Kaleidoscopic then became the love In Tishyarakshita for this prince Of solitude. She had to have him in Her bed. The...
by phillipw | Apr 14, 2020 | SP, TI, ZA
Zantedeschia, Spathe, Spadix, Anthurium, Philodendron, Tillandsia Cyanea, Etc. Those flowers, those ones that are not flowers, have weird Words given for the blooms that are not blooms. For scientists plain English disappeared When naming parts like these. In lab-like...
by phillipw | Mar 4, 2020 | TI
Time Shift Time’s shrunk and stretched, jointly, like some Freak Show trickery, a man with pulled out skin ………. Combined with squinching mirrors. Time is sleek And can’t be caught. It’s like besetting sin That won’t be...
by phillipw | Feb 21, 2020 | TI
The Coy Entity with Only the Corner of an Eye Behind Veils That essence without essence, time, is not For lobes to hear, for skin to touch and know With tenderness of love, for eye to plot Time’s ways, for tongue to touch its tip to, slow In wooing it to change its...
by phillipw | Nov 25, 2019 | BR, TI
Florida Today, because the air appears to blaze, I saw my brothers in the light of suns So bright that decades cannot dim their days. We played our games of brag and guns, Of pirate treasures gold like suntanned boys, Of daydreams live in afternoons so...
by phillipw | Nov 13, 2019 | CA, FL, TI, WH
Woodrow Wilson Whidden, Sr. 1913-1999 ; 1:32 in the Afternoon, July 16, 1969 Khonsu; wikimedia commons He had a lion childhood made of shoves And tumbles, little nips, and blinks, there by The sea of Florida with sisters’...
by phillipw | Nov 4, 2019 | FL, JE, TI
Quintet of Sonnets about Jeanette Black and White Her eyes cast down as if ashamed of style And beauty, she is captured. She is held Forever in the falseness. All the while This image has existed, it’s compelled Jeanette...
by phillipw | Aug 13, 2019 | BI, PH, TI
No Time for Thoughtless Guessing The modern, scientific concept that No time existed till the Big Bang flashed Is just about as stupid as a hat Without a brain beneath it. First, the smashed Down kernel, though unimaginably Dense, small and tense, was hunkered there,...
by phillipw | Feb 17, 2019 | TI
From giant, bulging cylinders the fans Sprayed out the fog to kill mosquitoes. How They acted I don’t know. Cancelled their banns? Abandoned buggy fucking? Stuttered, “Ow!”? I wonder if the city fathers were Opposed to free flight sex on buzzing wings. Were men...