by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | AS, CA, CH, ME, NE, PO, SA, ST
“Like Some Clean Beast” Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “In the evenings at Streonshalh . . . farm labourers gathered to play the harp and to sing. Caedmon . . . was in the habit of withdrawing to his...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | LO, VE
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...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | CL, OR, SE
Surging If planets spun before it entered you, They faltered, staggered as I thrust inside And upwards. If the oceans once were blue, They changed to blood with foaming lust. The stride Of hardened flesh in yielding slickness changed The universe to...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | TR
Unbound the Book Some somewhere not within the view of eyes A book lies open. It is perfect, full, So full that it can always bat off lies If it is read completely. It will pull The soul. Perfection means that it is free Of boundaries. We may write, and...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | CH, ET, FR, HE, Ho, LO, MA, ST
More Like Lightning He argued that her face was full of faults But perfect beauty was their startling end. Those imperfections listed were the vaults To her immaculate and lovely blend Contending with a theoretical Ideal. My lover, though, was more than that. His...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | BE, EN
The Beginnings and the End Why is it that the dark is at the start, Like bats in caverns, always? “Let there be Light” presupposes black. The human heart Is desperate and wicked. (Who can see That? Everyone who thinks.) The sperm that made You came from darkness...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | BA, HA, LO, VI
Synthesis Examine for yourself the claim that love Is noblest and the mightiest of all. Is it far better than the truth, above An iron-like honesty? Is love more tall Than mountained decency? And is not hate Sometimes required to make things work? ...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | MU, PE
Morning Stars Sang Together “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion” The music of the perfect spheres was heard By no one. Melodies or chords they made Stretched out like silence. They became absurd. Copernicus and Galileo swayed Them into nothingness. ...
