Poetry

I. But yesterday, your noble fathers bled Upon the fields of France, where countless dead Had found among the vines their final rest, To gild with fame a venerated crest Whose princely brandishing from...

  If seasons pass too fast you'd better run. If they proceed too slow indulge in fun. Sunups are best enjoyed in days of cold. Sundowns when heat waves linger fierce and bold. Old age returns...

Sail Fever I knew some terms, the merest germs Of illness called ‘Sail Fever’: Tack starboard, port, keep mainsail taut, Steer boat by tiller lever! One Saturday, beside the bay, A salesman full of...

The precious are so  easy to neglect: I let them down, my family and  my friends. It’s futile if I offer my respect - Today is  much too late to make amends. Nothing is left for me to do or say. The...

Where a lamppost spreads a white spot light Nursing silent night with canny purr, A racoon crosses there in sudden flight. Where an old man walks his dog this hour With a leash that’s buckled to his...

Nova Scotia and the Clouds of Summer So silently they march along, the clouds of summer, proud and strong; their grand approach from yonder shore majestically they wander o’er. Not for the likes of me...

For Elizabeth My morning’s mountain wears the lavish light Of candid clouds and truth-engendered white. Ah, heavens, spread your opalescent ray, And open earth-blind eyes to boundless sight, That love...

Alzheimer's Disease I can feel your deep darkness closing in, With its harrowing sense of helplessness, Soon obscenity sours tongues gathering; Havoc’s wrought by every hellish djin As chaos kicks aside...

Runnymede Revisited Note: Runnymede is the location where King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta. This poem was written in the 1990s when the English nation was debating whether to join the European...

Bristlecone Longevity The beauty of the tree is not how old, Indeed how ancient in its gnarling now, Not in its silent history yet untold, Nor in the pre-historic roots and bough— Their age—but in its...

Translator's Preliminary Note This is an original translation of a poem by Sappho (630-580 BC), traditionally known as the “old age poem” or the “Tithonus poem” (in the standard numbering by Lobel...

Heritage I like to say I’d an Egyptian father If that is too obscure for you, I’d rather Explain it just by citing preservation. They preserved mummies, he his indignation At how the world had gone...

Two Lives by Michael Maibach When soldiers die, They give two lives. The one they had, And the one denied. The spouse not met, The child unknown, The life unsaved, The welcome home. The hill...

Garden Waltz a terza rima sonnet in dactylic pentameter with a truncated foot at the end of each line Radishes sway to the rhythm of sunlight and rainfall, Carrots to minerals present in alkaline...

You pushed Grace hard so you could have your book. She did the layout, made the pdf. I bought the thing so I could take a look but, when I read it, I found blatant theft. You’d stolen poems from...

The Lord’s Supper They’re gathered round, astonished, full of dread, round him who like a wise man must decide, and who leaves those with whom he’s broken bread, and who comes like a stranger from...

The Fall Revisited The implications of the fall are endless in their reach; that lowly serpent had such gall, Eve's failure to beseech. Though what they chose when they did bite that infamous red...

Guess who is not invited to come to a dinner here? Rights are just for some people. Others have to disappear. There is no bias in denials of our services; we shall not break bread with those who do not...

It's first of sweaty, sweltering daybreaks of summer new. The fewer trailing steps of parting spring are still moist-fresh with drakes' claw prints and redolent green pollen specks. The waters in the...

“Only fools are positive.”  “You sure about that?” “I’m positive.” ―The Three Stooges “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else...

  While strolling around an illustrious lair, I was caught by a breeze of regret in the air, For gazing I was on old buildings of stone, All graced with such courage and dignity their own, With...

What has no subject one can tell, Yet tries to make it ring a bell? What makes you scratch your head and think, “How does this blather even link?” RULES: Write a rhyming riddle of any length and paste...

by Dusty Grein Like many of the old French refrain forms, the kyrielle originated in the 15th century with the traveling troubadours. It is a rhymed form, written in either 2 line couplets, or 4 line...

Born at Constantinople in 1762 of a French father and Greek mother, André Chénier grew up in pre-revolutionary France and studied at Paris. Well-read, and enamored with ancient Greece, he is considered one...

03.27.18 A smattering of rain above a hall That holds her earthy fragments, broken, spent, A woman who, in life, out-did them all, And e’en in death defies the elements. O, what would she make now of...

Written upon reading the book How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World. The beast once foretold for the end of days Crouched in a Karl Marx statue erected Last month in Germany, where it displays A...

Little Girl She's fishing in a rock pool just abandoned by the sea She's too engrossed within her world to notice you and me. She sprawls to draw a picture open book upon the sand Great masters never...

Note: Joseph Charles MacKenzie would like to offer a 25% discount on the first edition hardcover of Sonnets for Christ the King to his fellow poets and readers of the Society of Classical Poets, in gratitude...

by James Sale FORMAL COMPLAINTS by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 1997 MASQUERADE by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 2005 SKIRMISHES by Joseph S. Salemi, Pivot Press, 2010 I first encountered...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Confucius Institutes "Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon and truth." —paraphrase of a Buddhist quote by Lu "Reed ABCs" Wei The Chinese...

Congratulations to the following winners! Thank you to judges Joseph S. Salemi, James Sale, and Damian Robin.   First Place $100 Prize: Ben Foreman, Cascabel, Arizona Cheesemaking Find a...

To Make a Poet “A man can learn the art of poetry,” You say, “and many learn this art by me.” Poetry teacher, render something clear: Tell me, how do you teach a man to hear?   The...

  I may have borne them each, but it was you, Whose shoulders carried weight I never knew, You set the bar so high, so straight, so true, The surest, strongest Dad?  Well, that was you. I may...

Form Sonnet Turn the page and write again today Make something come out of an eager mind Make something in a new and different way In something both of earthy and refined For when I strive it seems that...

See notes below for background and allusions. Olivia: Daughter, shall we sit and grieve together, And tie our two bêtes noires up with a tether? You had Ezra Pound and I had Yeats: Two poets now...

A short film by Gleb Zavlanov. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxnDmkKqaF4&feature=youtu.be Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds...

  Everlasting Chesterton The author, G.K. Chesterton: A playful epigramist, A master of the terse bon mot, And witty dithyrambist. He loathed pomposity and claimed (And I believe quite...

  I Love This Life a rondeau I love this life in spite of all the trying times and every wall I must tear down to find success, although sometimes my happiness is thwarted, slowing to a...

Curtain Up! Sunset and the robins sing, nightingales reply song that summer evenings bring, weeping willows sigh from lawns and from thickets a chorus of crickets ____serenades but remains out of...

  The sky boiled, As the earth ruffled, Clouds blew past, And the soil buckled. The dead came forth, And stood in wait, Believers noticed, Heavens Gate. As they watched, It opened...