Irradiated Irises

The Goddess of Love Stands Distinct from Ecstasy

The Goddess of Love Stands Distinct from Ecstasy   The temple is love’s stone sonata made Of marble and of space.  Its pillars rise In fluting.  They are made of light and shade Or more like melodies which goddess eyes Can hear.  Between the columns shadows fail...

Verlaine, Rimbaud, Lucien Létinois

Verlaine, Rimbaud, Lucien Létinois Verlaine’s emotions are too distant, far Removed and cleft from violets of verse He filled French veins with, each line a devoir Of sorrow, since his feelings were as terse As AK-47 rounds.  His lines Were written out like blade...

Truer than Truth

               Truer than Truthem Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Great is Beauty’s grace,                                    Truth is yet as fair as she. ~ Thomas Campion High duty comes in...

Bleu, Blue, and Black:   A Sonnet Sequence

                              Bleu, Blue, and Black:                                    A Sonnet Sequence   Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem WARNING:  Some of the sonnets in this sequence may be very...

Irradiated Irises

            Irradiated Irises Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem His eyes were deep clairvoyant blue, and blue Of lighter kind, both present in his face At once for Paul to fall in love with.  True To...

Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima

   Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima The past is nuclear, exploding in A present moment boring as a brown Field waiting for some turnip seeds.  The skin Of now is guiltless, threatless till the frown Of yesterday’s wide sins rips up the fleece. The grimace is electric in...

Wedded Love vs. Armpit Stench

Wedded Love vs. Armpit Stench Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Romances sans Paroles (by Verlaine) has a “consistently high standard … and reflects his troubled emotional state over the rupture...

LONG YEARS

           LONG YEARS Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem “You can be free only with me, and I swear to you I will behave in the future.  I am sorry for my part in the wrong.  My mind is clear at last. ...

Éclats de Neige

               Éclats de Neige Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem “éclats de neige”~ Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations Paul often thought a boy has splinters in His eyes, his irises, his pupils, light...

 Their Painted Desert

       Their Painted Desert Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem They wait. They wait beneath.  They wait below Us, we who live.  Some wait in mud like Peat Men sacrificed for long lost reasons.  Woe Is far...

Watered Down Wine and Esthetics

Watered Down Wine and Esthetics “Gretchen Reydams-Shils (“Myth and Poetry in the Timaeus“) deals with Socrates’ puzzling remark that his description of an ideal state was like a painting.” ~ http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/plato-and-the-poets/ Socrates’...

The Sacred Fire

      The Sacred Fire Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The Thespians of Greece in ancient times Upheld the god of love, devout as saints Have ever been.  Deep lovers’ paradigms Are never quite as true...

Plato’s Ideal

          Plato’s Ideal For Denise/Josh and Rachel/Robert Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem [Uranus, the god of the heavens, is both father and mother to the goddess Aphrodite in Plato’s Symposium.] The...

  Verlaine Agonistes

         Verlaine Agonistes    “for me Rimbaud is an ever-living reality, a sun        aflame within me, a sun that will not suffer eclipse”                  ~  Paul Verlaine long after Arthur’s death The Philistines bored out the strongman’s eyes With iron-cold...

A Found Sonnet: Blue and Black Gemstones  

A Found Sonnet: Blue and Black Gemstones Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “I cannot accept this death.  It’s been some Years now since we’ve seen each other.  Rimbaud, Though (Arthur’s art and face),...

Four Hundred and Twenty  Some Odd Days

Four Hundred and Twenty  Some Odd Days Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem When genius lived in London, English brains Were unaware.  When genius loved among Them, drinking gin is what they did.  The...

Super Binomial Byronic Poets

Super Binomial Byronic Poets We used to worry that computers might Take over poetry, that they might thrill Us with Romantic zings beyond the height Of human seers, that motherboards might spill Out glorious epics and the like. But now We have another worry. Cyborgs...

Narrow Rooms

          Narrow Rooms It started in a room made narrow by Paul’s Belle-mère.  Lice-filled Arthur bailed from this Before the bourgeois ones could make him fly At their command.  He fled to the abyss, The alleyed chasm of streetlife.  When Paul Found Rimbaud after...

The Transit of Venus

          The Transit of Venus                       with a monarch’s voice              Cry, “Havoc!” When Venus transits hairy torsos, she Impels much more than sweat in manly hearts. This goddess is a Viking on a spree Of killing, gone berserk.  Her orbit charts A...

Comet 46P/Wirtanen to Be Viewed from Venezia, Serenissima

Comet 46P/Wirtanen to Be Viewed from Venezia, Serenissima Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem A glowing circle smudge of aqua light Sails through the constellation Taurus with An icy pinprick at its heart....

Primitive Sophisticated Truth

  Primitive Sophisticated Truth Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem   ….…… When Greeks believed that nature’s aspects moved As gods and goddesses, as wind and fire, Then Bóreas came...

Sententious Symbiosis

Sententious Symbiosis “The Roman historian Tacitus records an early Germanic gnome: ‘Women must weep and men remember.’” Michael Schmidt, The Story of Poetry, 5 Sometimes a war is small and very large At once. A woman and a man are two But forced together they produce...

Vermont

                      Vermont Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem A white wood house defines the slope.  The trees Have gone to red and flame.  A field beyond Is spread with grass and granite rocks at...

Donna Leon

                   Donna Leon I’m tired of Donna, not of Venice, though. Brunetti is still likeable enough And Paola’s improved a bit.  The slow Starts to the crime plots make it tough For readers used to fiction of this kind, Detective novels.  Some might think,...

Colors Truer than Truth

 Colors Truer than Truth Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Not veiled and partly veiled, completely veiled, The peonies are like a perfect prayer, Perhaps one to the Trinity.  Exhaled In reverence the...

Wokingham and Venice (Petrarchan and English sonnets)

Wokingham and Venice (Petrarchan and English sonnets) In Wokingham where charming little red Brick houses decorated with cream stone Maintain the quintessential, modest tone Of English towns, a quiet A to Zed Of quaintest understatement, I just found A book about...

Absinthe-minded Charlatan

     Absinthe-minded Charlatan       “The most curious thing about the transformation of the sensorial apparatus—the phenomenon, at least, that struck me most forcibly in the experiments I conducted on myself— is that all sensations are perceived by all senses at...

What Kind of Place is Fit for Men?

What Kind of Place is Fit for Men? …………“L’allée est sans fin” ~ Paul Verlaine What kind of place is fit for hommes who want To make a London nest together, one Where poetry is brooded, a romaunt Perhaps, or maybe some...

“Operating Live on Poetry”

“Operating Live on Poetry” —Delahaye in Divagations So.  Just another boozing, druggy day. That’s how French poets’ love affairs are spent. They sit with friends in an ivre café, And Rimbaud says, “Try an experiment, Hommes.  Put your hands on the table.” ...

Narrow Rooms

            Narrow Rooms It started in a room made narrow by Paul’s Belle-mère.  Lice-doomed Arthur bailed from this Before the bourgeois ones could make him fly At their command.  He fled to the abyss, The alleyed chasm of streetlife.  When Paul Found Rimbaud after...

What We Learn in the Great College Street of Knowledge

What We Learn in the Great College Street of Knowledge The worst conclusion to a crimson bout Of love is truth.  We sniff the smell of facts And they are ugly mumbles. With his snout The poet gets the scent.  His heart reacts Like pack hounds to the trail a cognac fox...

Rimbaud in Camden

       Rimbaud in Camden                    “an angel in exile” ~ Paul Verlaine Imagine then an exiled angel.  How Would he appear, this creature, if he were More real than metaphor?  His lids would bow Down over such blue eyes with eyelash fur That azure would become...

Canines Having Trouble Disengaging

Canines Having Trouble Disengaging “A kid Casanova, but even more so a certified expert in love-affairs, doesn’t he laugh with his flaring nostrils and his handsome dimpled chin … ?” ~ Paul Verlaine, Les Poètes Maudits ………. Promiscuous in...

Sweetly Bitter Mouth at Sixteen

Sweetly Bitter Mouth at Sixteen Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Sublime this child with lips which long have been As sensual as ancient memories, eyes So lost in gold mythologies that twin To Lucifer...

The Products of Love’s Smog

The Products of Love’s Smog The older poet dreamed perhaps of past Emotions with the younger one (of France And beds), dreamed, dreamed in daylight and the last Night hour as wakefulness began to prance Across subconsciousness of London’s dawn. The elder man created...

HMS Implacable

               HMS Implacable              “Because you loved me as it had to be.”            ~ Paul Verlaine in “To Arthur Rimbaud” We love the thought of love and fate combined. We love the grand idea that lust is out Of our control like earthquakes.  Disinclined To...

Marriage Proposal

          Marriage Proposal Proposal:  To exhume the bodies of Two poets, Arthur Rimbaud and Verlaine, And re-entomb them with the one above The other in a common grave—two men Together once again and once again, Forever, one on top.  The digging will Be done in...

The Shining

              The Shining While Arthur wears a top hat, Paul has shoes Shined—nothing here of poetry.  A pipe Pollutes the air, unpoetically.  Booze   Bridgeman Art Library Ain’t that poetic either, both guys ripe With body odor.  Try to write some verse With...

A Sentimental Conversation

A Sentimental Conversation Rambunctiousness invaded Paris for A while when Rimbaud arrived, an army Of one belligerent.  Soul of a whore And manners of a rapist of the smarmy Bourgeoisie made him a Communard of Less than a year’s time there.  Arthur ran Away to...

A Dining Room with Keyboard Music

A Dining Room with Keyboard Music The fourteen months or so that Rimbaud spent In London aren’t enough to make the claim That he was England’s modern man who went To places other poets couldn’t name. Verlaine was pushing boundaries, too, in lines, But his modernity is...

Miss Manners

            Miss Manners   I am an ephemeral and a not too discontented citizen of a metropolis considered modern because all known taste has been avoided in the furnishings and the exterior of the houses as well as in the plan of the city.  ~  Rimbaud on London A...

Serenissima as Glass-like Glory

         Serenissima as Glass-like Glory   A vision made of stone and windows, waves, Reflections from their surfaces that touch The walls and panes, a patterning which saves The buildings from becoming just a clutch Of chaos, turning them to reverie And daydream,...

Pleasure, Prussian Pain: Verlaine Remembers Arthur’s Eyes

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...

Verlaine Conducts the Tribunal: Rimbaud’s Eyes

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...

Lucien Viotti, Madame Mathilde Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud

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...

Four Hundred & Twenty Some Odd Days

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,...

A Found Sonnet: Blue and Black Gemstones

A Found Sonnet:  Blue and Black Gemstones “I cannot accept this death.  It’s been some Years now since we’ve seen each other.  Rimbaud, Though, Arthur’s art and face, still shine out from The back of my dark brain.  Rimbaud is a low, Bright sun which burns inside me,...

Difficult to See Intimations of Immortality

Difficult to See Intimations of Immortality We ride past, jostling on the bus, and can’t Make out the wording on the plaque; so close, And yet importance can be missed.  We pant To make connection and to get a dose Of greatness or at least of meaning.  Paul Reached...

Séance

                    Séance Verlaine was more a séance poet than A seer or prophetic voice.  He saw The vestiges of love, a phantom man When love was gone, and souvenirs, not raw And brutal facts.  Paul called up from his past Misshapen memories.  He did not want To...

The Deaths of Mad Queens

   The Deaths of Mad Queens The heroines in Racine’s tragedies Are monsters, dignities destroyed by heat Of passion harder than a marble frieze, Rock lust for man or boy.  Queens’ hearts replete With rage and love, this royalty is blind As Oedipus’s eyes with jelly...

His Eyes, His Hair, the Seasons in London

     [Verlaine describes Rimbaud in London]     His Eyes, His Hair, the Seasons in London The overarching springtime blue in May Was set with bluebell darker tints in flecks. Those irises were perfect in the way A nearly purple paragon respects The imperfection of the...

Merry Go Round Glamor

   Merry Go Round Glamor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rQvb75Girg A large, significant proportion of The gay and bi community today Is desperate for the story of the love Of swirling Rimbaud and Verlaine to bray Out gaily as bright carousel horses’ Tunes, twirling...

Emancipation Proclamation

Emancipation Proclamation “You’re free alone with me,” the tyrant wrote To Paul when he had made his cowardly Decision and had fled by pettish boat. “I, only, offer you your liberty.” This freedom was la liberté of slaves, Though.  La égalité was not discussed, Nor...

Verlaine Afterwards

        Verlaine Afterwards Allow my dizzy head to loll against Your chest.   Your kisses ringing like a bell, Because they are the last, are love condensed. Those kisses are as lovely as the knell Of wedding chimes for grooms who do not know Tomorrow.  Let me drowse...

Verlaine on la Poésie

      Verlaine on la Poésie “a composer is someone who desires, as a male desires” ~ Jean Barraqué A poet is a man who knows desire, Desire as love, affection, and as lust, Devotion as a spirit’s candle fire, Aflame as silently as men who must Refrain from...

Blackest Star

              Blackest Star          “Poetry is a Destructive Force.” ~ Wallace Stevens          “Panteurs cruelles” ~ Arthur Rimbaud, “Voyelles” A hurricane’s extremest blast is like The force of Rimbaud.  Alexandrines fell Like Poland’s cavalry when the Third Reich...

The Terrors of the Earth

     The Terrors of the Earth      “Discussing, between moves, iamb and spondee,         Anacoluthon”  ~ Conrad Aiken, Preludes for Memnon, LVI Wild Christ will have revenges on you both That all the world shall — God will sear your things Till charred...

Distant Intervals

                      Distant Intervals “It is the distant dramas of friends that are hardest to conjure up.” ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, 239 “And it’s only at distant intervals that I see the friend to whom I’ve given all my affection” ~...

Clarity

[This one is written from the viewpoint of Verlaine.  Rimbaud composed a prose poem that seems to be written in the voice of Verlaine thinking about Rimbaud, “He wants to live life as a sleepwalker”  (Deliria I.) Here I have turned that prose poem on its...

Rock and Gas Giants

Rock and Gas Giants   Five planets rise to shine in white and red Above.  The springtime sky becomes divine. They all are gods, though one of them is dead, Slaughtered by his son.    Night-sky gods align Themselves with nothing.   Is this an omen? Astrologers...

I Do not Think the Boy

     I Do not Think the Boy I do not think the boy will ever leave me, But if he does, I’ll sleepwalk through the rest Of time with Holy God’s dark rosary In hand and fumble beads to make the best Of  days  and  nights  and  years  and  decades  lost To...

Uncertainty Leading to Certainty

Uncertainty Leading to Certainty The London fog was lush, more lush than French Fogs anywhere, more plush than Paris fogs At least.  It bordered on the louche, its stench A prophecy of LA’s stringent smogs. Verlaine remarked that London’s murk was worse, That...

In Despondent Mood

In Despondent Mood “in despondent mood” ~ Verlaine, “Birds in the Night,” Romances Sans Paroles The Anglo-Saxons said that life was bleak As one bird flying in a stormy night Which enters through a window like a streak And out the other window of the bright Hall...

How Something Solid as this Man

How Something Solid as this Man “The shadow of the trees in the misty river dies like smoke” ~ Verlaine, Romances sans Paroles How something solid as this man beside Me there dissolved to nothing more than smoke Mixed in with shadows of a willow, oak, And hulking...

James 3:5-8

            James 3:5-8 The greatest writer in the history Of modern poésie française was slapped Because he mocked his only devotee. Rimbaud mocked Verlaine and Verlaine snapped. He smacked the boy across the face with lunch. The fish he’d bought for them to eat...

Rimbaud, Magyars, and the Perfect Number Seven

Rimbaud, Magyars, and the Perfect Number Seven Research reveals that when the Magyars Invaded Hungary, they counted up Not quite to seven.  And in Verlaine’s stars Barely anything mattered but the cup Arthur offered him to drink.  Verlaine should Undoubtedly have...

Arthur Rimbaud, Lucien Létinois, Frédéric-Auguste Cazals

Arthur Rimbaud,  Lucien Létinois, Frédéric-Auguste Cazals The decades wane away and Verlaine hears The man in Africa expressing in His silence what he said to Paul those years Ago when he in melancholic sin Repented in a Belgian prison.  “You, Little poet of straw,...

“Il faut, voyez-vous, nous pardonner les choses”

“Il faut, voyez-vous, nous pardonner les choses” ~ Paul Verlaine in Romances Sans Paroles [ “I need you to pardon some things.”] “Let’s be two children,” Paul suggests, leave The cabbage life behind, and live on love Outside the world’s stubborn facts.  Let’s cleave...

The Autumn Sings Exhilaration

The Autumn Sings Exhilaration “Scarcely sad the autumn seems Gently recurring”  ~ Paul Verlaine, “La fuite est verdatre et rose,” Romances sans paroles The autumn sings exhilaration through Its own potential sadness.  This time fall Is focusing on frantic leaves and...

La Danse Interminable

   La Danse Interminable Et vous, les loups maigres ~ Romances sans paroles, Verlaine The moon is closed inside a copper shell, A casing of your manufacture, lad. Although my destiny’s a minor hell Compared to others’ sufferings, it’s sad Enough for me.  The landscape...

Revenez, Revenez, Chers Amis

Revenez, Revenez, Chers Amis Come back to us, Verlaine, Rimbaud!  We need You at this hour.  We need you so that you Can edify us, show us not to breed False freedoms.  None of us wants Xanadu Heaved up by license, anger or your faux Amour.  We do not want your...

July the Fourth, 1873

     July the Fourth, 1873 Rimbaud recalls his older man to crawl To Arthur’s bed in Camden and return To more abuse and weak man’s pain, but Paul Refuses.  He has had enough to burn His heart forever and to brand it with Hard scars to last for an eternity And so he...

Speaking of Lice: And Only Man is Vile

Speaking of Lice:  And Only Man is Vile “unbelievably brutal, loud-mouthed people in the streets”      ~ Paul Verlaine on the people of London “To see oursels as ithers see us” ~ Robert Burns He said that they were small and skinny, too, Emaciated, most especially The...

Illuminations, 35 Howland Street

Illuminations, 35  Howland Street No more than just a single, husk-like room, Their cube in Howland Street became the place Where greatness found inception, found its womb. While huddling in this bolthole from disgrace, Paul wrote adagios, pale Romances sans Paroles,...

On a Leash

               On a Leash Rimbaud remarked, “Dogs are liberals,” to Gastineau, the Mautés’ loving dog. A “doll-faced” time bomb ticked away with blue, Blue eyes, light blue and deep, until the fog Of future London filled that Paris home. He was an Ostrogothic army in...

The Time That’s Stretched

     The Time That’s Stretched The time that’s stretched between Verlaine and us Has painted in a scumble on his scenes With Arthur.  It’s as if some sort of pus Has been brushed over them like filthy jeans Encrusted with the grime of tears.  A scrim Obscures our view...

Synesthesia

          Synesthesia Verlaine spun out his poetry like silk From spider abdomens, but it had hues Of melody, it sounds the touch of milk, And all came also from the fragrant blues Of Rimbaud’s irises and, more, from deep Within the boy’s manly soul which sang In...

Getting Away with It

Getting Away with It Socrates said, “Alcibiades is unhappy because everywhere Alcibiades goes, Alcibiades takes himself with him.” If you were in a rented room with Paul On Howland Street, you too would want to spend Your time away from him, away from all That...

Heartless Books

          Heartless Books He spiralled through erotic books complete With spelling errors, and Church Latin ones, Complete with telling errors, sneered at sweet Tales “read by grandmothers” but not their sons. He even leafed through little children’s books But not...

A Filthy Flow

            A Filthy Flow An image of St. Mark’s reflected in The waves of aqua alta warps the strength Of loveliness.  Distortions caused by sin Are called to mind.  Iniquities at length Are brought to judgment.  Past Venetians stole That body from a church down by...

Old Palazzi are Resurrected

Old Palazzi are Resurrected Old palaces are resurrected from Within, although, perhaps, their faces are Allowed to keep their wrinkled look, like scar Of age, or sin, and that of Christendom. The looted goods among the marble walls, Mosaic glitter made from greed are...

La serenissima

          La serenissima A city is presided over by The moon in half its glory, and the scars And blemishes revealed beneath bright Mars Along the Grand Canal are quite as high In number as the craters up above— Serene half disc, the surfaces below, A twinning of...

Flying to Venice

           Flying to Venice The vision of far Venice rises high Inside the mind, as Alps rise high with snow, Rock, clouds, and glacier whiteness spread below. The heart has opened up its mystic eye. It pierces through the distance and the mist Prophetically, more...

Sex, Drugs, and Roses

            Sex, Drugs, and Roses It seems at least a possibility That spoiled, soiled brats might just have feelings, too. They’d have the usual ones, hostility And sulking, and that adolescent brew Of self-regard, fragility, and rage. But maybe Rimbaud had...

A Broader Canvas

          A Broader Canvas The house guest, Rimbaud, full of polite tact As usual, demanded that a pic Of some poor long-dead person, who now lacked The decency to avoid having sick- Looking mold on her forehead, be removed. If he had only known his lover’s mere,...

Exile

                     Exile According to Graham Robb’s biography of Rimbaud, .he & Verlaine visited Hyde Park Corner as tourists ………….during their first period in London. ………......

Therapy

                 Therapy What herbal dram can doctors give for love? L’amour refuses treatment, runs its course. If you trip this marathon runner, shove, Impose a faltering stumble, she will force Her staggering legs to jolt along.  If you Slash love’s wrists...

Letter to his Wife

          Letter to his Wife They suffered from a passion like their loins Ripped open, full of pain, and gushing life Out like the plastic chips, the bastard coins (More costly than the infant Paul or wife) From this combined Las Vegas slot-machine Affair.  The older...

A Very Bulldog Welcome

       A Very Bulldog Welcome The day Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine arrived Together, London was in lovely light. At least it should have been.  The sun, deprived Of autumn glory, cringed from urban blight. The coal-fire chimneys’ vileness forced Verlaine To write,...

Keats, Rimbaud, Verlaine

   Keats, Rimbaud, Verlaine Day after day I sit and write French verse Forms, villanelles and terzanelles.  At noon I leave the British Library.  “Much worse Existences,” I say, smugly, “are strewn Across the urban universe.”  Today I noticed from the bus Paul...

Vesuvian Vengeance

    Vesuvian Vengeance Even vengeance has a startling beauty To ancients and their atavistic heirs Around the Middle Sea who love duty To family honor.  They connive their snares Into murder and conceive they are Achieving glistening sweetness in the blood. Their lips...

The Price of Poetry

          The Price of Poetry                                                          French Wikipedia “It’s Verlaine just arrived from Brussels…. He is handsome in his own way, and, despite being severely short of clothes, gives no sign of being overwhelmed by...

Not Nearly Twenty Thousand Leagues across the Sea

Not Nearly Twenty Thousand      Leagues across the Sea Two poets took a science-fiction trip Together, leaving sonnet Europe for Modernity in London.  Comic strip Futurity of hardness spread before Them: coal fed dragons belched out smoke and fire On rigid iron tracks...

Rimbaud, the Seer, Speaks

  Rimbaud, the Seer, Speaks Somewhere among the beds and sheets of dreams Untroubled sexes sleep.  They do not yearn For likeness only, nor for love that seems To need its opposite to make it burn. These drowsy flares are burning in slow, Unspoken prophecies the...

What We Learn in the Great College Street of Knowledge

 What We Learn in the Great  College Street of Knowledge The worst conclusion to a crimson bout Of love is truth.  We sniff the smell of facts And they are ugly mumbles. With his snout The poet gets the scent.  His heart reacts Like pack hounds to the trail an orange...

Lucien Viotti, Arthur Rimbaud, and Lucien Létinois

Lucien Viotti, Arthur Rimbaud,         and Lucien Létinois         ‘armes lentes’ ~ Paul Verlaine Paul always was a child prodigy when It came to slow, slow tearfulness about Those ones he loved, especially young men. Paul specialized in slowed rubato pout When...