by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | GO, TR
Enough Trouble Caused When we began to put the gods in myth And the language of the poets, transcendence Died. This literature became the smith That pounded, flat, godly ascendance To make them jewellery foil for our minds. They used to be so coolly far above Us that...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | MY, RE, TH
Moses, Saint Francis, Saint Teresa ….. Gods used to come. We felt a sudden gust. A moment came, somewhere, somehow, at dawn Or in the twilight. Daybreak caused a thrust Of deepest recognition, then withdrawn. A twilight apparition might remain A fraction longer...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | DI, GO, TR
Bow Down Thine Ear Gods used to be transcendent, far beyond, Above, away, unreachable on cliffs Too high to scale. We, humans, were so fond That we imagined Gods behind white whiffs Of mists in sacred precincts set aside By...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | IS
Piddling Holiness The One God, Allah, has a brand new, great idea to turn the millions who have learned To loathe Him. He will form Pisslamic State. The kafir millions who have rightly spurned Him recently because of losers armed With trucks, and cars, and vans,...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | GO, JE
Divinity Jehovah hovers, prying with that eye, All-seeing gaze, omniscience. Worse than That sideways eyeball of Egyptians, Spy- In-Chief, He’s always seeing if He can Trip up and punish. He comes down in the cloud And fire on Sinai and writes on stone With...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | AC, AL, AN, DA, HE, JO
David and Jonathan, Achilles and Patroclus, Alexander and Hephaestion Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Hephaestion, lover of Alexander the Great We heroize male anger, all the way From David’s...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | AN
The Big Exceptions The women move in caged-in places both In life and plays. In poetry they are Curtailed to Sappho and Corinna. Troth Constricts Penelope. It hems. No spar To take her seas away, she tends a loom, Is trapped at night unpicking her trapped work, And...
by phillipw | Apr 18, 2020 | DI, GO
Don’t Be Fooled The gods’ eyes, even when the gods are turned Away, are staring at us. Egypt’s gods Are set askance. Mortal sins are discerned By monumental eyes. Temple facades Are covered with sly looks from faces sloped Away and sideways angles...
