by phillipw | Feb 5, 2020 | LO
The Sum of Life Love “has no great influence upon the sum of life” ~ Samuel Johnson He tots up all the numbers, money, words He listed in that dictionary, wrote In books and articles, and all the turds He shat from all that food that made him bloat Up...
by phillipw | Feb 4, 2020 | LO, RO
Perfect Bliss Love brings divinities immortal bliss. Eternity of loving only they Can have as they can live from kiss to kiss In never ending sequence. Groaning, they In pleasure with each lengthy meeting of Their lips, ten thousand eons lingering...
by phillipw | Feb 4, 2020 | PH, PL
Plato’s Path to Enlightenment Serene Ideas are the Truth beyond The things our senses show to us. What we see And smell and taste and touch and hear are fond Impressions but are not the Truth. To free Ourselves from mere impressions, we must break Away, dismissing...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2020 | PH, WH
His Hair [The infant Phillip sleeping under a Florida fan] The air blows just above his brow. Hair lifts And falls like thought inside an angel’s brain While drowsing. Curls like these are gentle gifts From heaven. Silks like these can know no...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2020 | CH
[This is the Petrarchan sonnet I wrote tonight, Christmas Eve. Hmm. That was in 2012 I started it on the coach ride to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle and finished during the organ music preceding the service. ...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2020 | JO, KE, KI
March 1819 John strolls alone along spring’s English streets. He sees a kitten being tortured by A boy, a butcher’s boy, and fights and beats Him, thrashes him. Just over five feet high, John intervenes when others might have left The beef-slab bully to...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2020 | HE
Tried by Fire “I can never feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its Beauty.” ~ John Keats A truth that forms outside pure beauty fails. No matter who propounds a thought, or what Cathedra it...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2020 | FE, LE
[When this sonnet was written, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s trilogy of books about his walk from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul (which he refused to call Istanbul) had still not been finished. Indeed, it never was. The third volume was called appropriately The...
