by phillipw | Feb 17, 2020 | CH, PH, ST, WH
Your Echo Comes from Long Lost Time ……. …………….. Your echo comes, reverberating from Lost hours, those twenty thousand days betrayed By absence, nights whose sweetness will not come Now, never be redeemed. Not even grayed Out...
by phillipw | Feb 16, 2020 | CO, ZY
Annunciation While we are still inside the womb, mites, specks Of protein, not much more, our mothers host Mere little flakes of spirit, tiny flecks Of would-be souls, each one a proto-ghost Though prescience of sweat and death we lack. This long before...
by phillipw | Feb 16, 2020 | AF
Making Light of Africa’s Future As if the darkness were not dark enough Already, blackouts flash their blackness on Us all. Across the continent they snuff Out light in travesties of promised dawn. The Naija attitude is mocked each time The lights go off. In fact,...
by phillipw | Feb 16, 2020 | NA
His Soul Grips Him from the Depths Narcissus’ soul reached up just high enough From depths of water to invoke his love. His image seized him. Its embrace was rough, More like a rape. His beauty was above, Two times, upon the surface of the pool, And higher still...
by phillipw | Feb 16, 2020 | HE
Craving As complicated as arrangements for A funeral, desire is often not Observed impassively by victims. Sore And broken ribs are known by the distraught Too thoroughly. Though doctors can perceive The cracks by using X-rays, keenest pain Eludes...
by phillipw | Feb 16, 2020 | BI
Why Hen Birds Don’t Warble Among the leaves, the limbs and branches birds Are singing. Everywhere these creatures perch Cocks make their sounds. The pulsing throats send words To others of their kind, from oak and birch And fence and hedgerow, saying, “Stop! This...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | DI, EM, JO, KE
Unfinished Symphonies All lives are incomplete, not just the life Of Keats—or Emily in Amherst locked In circumstance. Chance wields the palette knife And even genius finds its choices balked By limitations of the oil paints That fate provides. The colors on...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | DE, MO
Intaglio How beautiful a piece of art can make Death seem. The words can lift us up like love, A suffering love of purity. They shake Us like a virgin prophetess above Our passion, this especially if they Are elevated by the melodies of voice. When...
