by phillipw | Nov 8, 2019 | BL, RO
Threat and Self Salvation The bud looks like a ruined dream of cloth That wants to be a pale mauve casing for An infant butterfly or for a moth Awaiting birth, except it opens more Like tissue made of bruising and of scar, Made more with doom than promise. Each dark...
by phillipw | Nov 8, 2019 | HU
Victor’s Meditation A hunchback rises there above the bells But nothing in this scene is like the hour Of stylized beauty in the Book of Kells Bent over in a cell. He aches the power Of hopeless love more cruel than the rack And flogging. Ugliness is...
by phillipw | Nov 8, 2019 | DO, LO
The High Perch This calmness has a loveliness, though not Extreme as passion’s face in pain called bliss. Serenity has settled on the plot Of soil that used to thrive with thrills amiss But now is as a sacred garden, walled. A steadiness (caressing,...
by phillipw | Nov 8, 2019 | CH, DR
Abandoned for Skip on Wisconsin Avenue, N.W. . I met you in a Georgetown street one day Alone among the shopping crowds, we two. We talked as if you had not left us all, Left me and others, wife and Matt, who grew Away in pain. He used to hit his mom So...
by phillipw | Nov 8, 2019 | Uncategorized
Eden and Methuselah I’m glad that I can’t shed my skin and grow A new persona since I might succumb To that temptation. I’d shed age below Me onto others, Eve-like, who might come Too close. I’d offer the besetting sin Of being old and slackened, arthritic, And...
by phillipw | Nov 7, 2019 | MA
Hair¡Style¡Class Hair short, the scalp (mumblingly visible) Says, “Modest and male, this one,” but the long- Haired, balloony Afro, risible Boy all but shouts, “Hey! Everyone should throng Around my hard on heart, or I’ll be hurt, No, angry like a...
by phillipw | Nov 7, 2019 | CO, SE, Z
Affirmation Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.” Jehovah made the palms of Zanzibar (Observed from high above as we...
by phillipw | Nov 7, 2019 | LO
Kilimanjaro Obscured The drizzle came in stealth before midnight, Continued like the mind, fixated, of A leopard on a limb, flexing for flight Downward on its prey. This fate from above I met with tourist equanimity: The sleepy thought that comforted me was,...
