by phillipw | Feb 23, 2020 | VE
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,...
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 | 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, VE
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,...
