by phillipw | Apr 9, 2020 | AE, BE, ES
Critiquing Beauty Your beauty reasons truer than the truth. It throbs a thoughtful feeling where a mere Veracity of judgement yields to youth And freshest irises. Your pupils peer Past plain philosophy. Where liquid lies On lenses, they give entrance...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | BU, EN
Blankness for Sale as Enlightenment The Buddha stands in golden skirts with sight Of toenails underneath. Above his waist Black’s lacquer torso brings the dynamite Of revelation. He has been erased Not just by gold and lacquer darkness: he Is broken. There below...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | Uncategorized
Golden Opposite of Grave Beauty The Buddhist, Yuezun, saw light like gold Above the blistering sands. The desert blight Of Taklamakan gained no stranglehold On shimmering beauty. There above cliff height A thousand golden Buddhas sang and danced With heavenly maids,...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | AN, BE, PO
Upon the Face of Agamemnon “and also he [King Priam of Troy] admires Agamemnon for his beauty” ~ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 906 Forget that Helen for a moment. Think Of gorgeous men. The King of Troy could not Resist men’s beauty. Helen caused a stink That...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | CH, ST
A Journey A calmness settles, not a numbness. Trees I pass, that used to drip with pain and drop Their leaves in orange sorrow, only please With steadiness of green. They hold a crop Of new, or dark, or waving apples, leaves Or needles. Fields no...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | AN, EL
Hoot Elegies “Initially the elegy was not restricted to laments. On the contrary, there was the erotic elegy (brilliantly taken up by the Latin poet Ovid)” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 11 In long gone centuries elegies were hot With sex. The...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | LO, LU, RO
Atheism “The lyric had functions in religious and other terms.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 10 So what has changed? Nothing really, except We now make lust itself a god, divine Without the need of Venus. We have swept The gods...
by phillipw | Apr 8, 2020 | AN
Scholarly Blindness “Since before 450 BC there was no prose literature, [sic] our only windows on the ancient world are the poems.” ~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 8 It only goes to show that scholars love To focus narrowly. He looked so hard At...
