Monthly Archives August 31, 2019

  Learning Experience The world is filled with rules For making things; and schools Where ziggurats of thought, Erected there, are taught. The language that we use Now hides within a ruse Of...

Love Song for a Grapefruit Dear Grapefruit, I of late have been untrue, Seduced by sweet confections of all sorts; My tastebuds languish, and my girth reports Unwanted gain from my neglect of you. The...

from a crown of sonnets I. In Khayelitsha, an urban township of Cape Town, an average of 635 sexual assaults on women travelling to and from toilets was reported each year. . . with total annual costs of...

Investment Strategies At work we studied many charts and graphs With due attention to the bottom line, But had we dwelt upon our epitaphs We would have spent our days decanting wine. First published in...

I. The Evacuation of St Kilda The remote island community on St Kilda had existed for thousands of years in considerable hardship until, from the 1890s, tourists began to visit in large numbers. The wealth of...

When our new park enticed me to a walk I saw a dandelion on the trail. Its yellow bloom hung on its broken stalk And it appeared to call me with a wail. Was it a she, or rather she a he? I was bemused:...

I'll never own a leaf blower, I'll never rake with noise, Or drive away God's tiny mole By blasting at his tunnel hole. I'll never own a leaf blower, I'll never scream my task, Or trample over village...

  My father woke the day that he __Was in the forest born To find that all gentility __Was from his nature shorn. A base unwilled enchantment laid __That jealous fairy scorned. For in that tale...

These Nice Guys after Gwendolyn Brooks NICE CHRISTIAN MAN. A DIME A DOZEN. These nice guys. They forfeit the prize. They get pushed around. They carpet the ground. They exist for others....

Haiku   When a newborn cries, locked in a room by itself, does it make a sound?   Fog enshrouds the night. Woven in the heavy mist, a thread of fireflies.     In Time -...

Evening Stroll by P.C. Boutens (1870-1943), written in The Hague in 1909, translated by Leo Zoutewelle We wandered much too late today! __Nearby the final bridge, There where the trail just fades...

Thank you to everyone who participated! Judges: Joseph S. Salemi, Adam Sedia, Manfred Dietrich   First ($100 Prize) A spike is there, but it’s not gold, Some forests have them, so I’m told. They...

  This is a tale of sibling rivalry from the 1812 Brothers Grimm collection of Children’s and Household Tales. Similar stories exist in Danish, English, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Slovinian and...

  The Moon, torn from the Sun, her only lover, Rose, starry-eyed and weeping beams of light, A mourning widow left to wisp and hover, A torturously pitiable sight, Wan from the strain of sobbing...

After the Rain After the rain, it’s time to walk the field again, near where the river bends. Each year I come to look for what this place will yield— lost things still rising here. The farmer’s plow...

all poetry by Bruce Dale Wise The Captive Caesar by Aedile Cwerbus Though it was many years ago, millennia, in fact, it seems, like yesterday, when Caesar's ship-trip was attacked. He had gone off to...

Bucket-Kicking Musings “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” —Mark Twain When my mortal coil has shuffled off, I’ll not lie in the buff; I’ll rock a chic...

The Devil at Woodstock I was a mere sixteen that Summer day We all piled in a beat-up car and drove To Woodstock, or someplace we had been told That a great spectacle was to occur— An earth-shaking...

Beyond Scientism Old wives’ tales, humble kin of ancient lore, Like road signs carved in stone are durable. Traditionists are deemed incurable By bright authorities who can’t ignore A single...

Gray I feel a certain loyalty to gray. Gray days, gray sweaters, cars - gray everything. Gray soothes and calms. It doesn’t boast, or fling itself before you like some shades do (they know who they...

  One interesting question is ‘why poetry, specifically?’ I am currently writing an ‘epic’ called The English Cantos, and I have chosen to write my epic in terza rima. There are many forms of...

Faith I'm pond scum, someone said today. Some soup primordial, in a bay was struck by lightning. Oh, I see I'm wrought by electricity... then, look! it’s a bacterium who, in a deep delirium, decided...

Ned’s Revision Ned Kelly was an outlaw, of humble Irish stock; Born to Australian parents who farmed a rural block. Assault at fourteen years of age drew police attention, And further charges followed,...

  Do I remember him? How could I fail To think of that tender boy, handsome and hail, Zealous and hearty, his muscles in tone, Who once climbed these ancient hills, cycling alone? He’d...

An ode to Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Sebastian: from Greek “venerable” I touch the pages of your music. Then My thoughts transport to times and distant sounds Where you once dwelt. I think of...

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  From A Gallery of Ethopaths Ethopaths fear, as much as cancer, A straight, unvarnished, simple answer. They love the euphemistic chatter That clouds up an essential matter. Seeing things clearly...

  Two Laws In this imperfect world who suffers less: A good man wrongly jailed with conscience clear? Another whose low deeds he can't confess Though from man's laws he nothing has to fear? The...

  Two mass shootings took the lives of twenty-nine this afternoon. Fifty-one (at least) were injured, every life cut short too soon. Exiting a downtown bar or looking for a loaf of bread, Simply...

A Clerihew is a four-line comic poem with a rigid rhyming scheme, aabb, but no metric requirements. It stands in stark contrast to the strict metric requirements with no rhyming scheme in the Iliad. This...

  Giacomo da Lentini is a Sicilian who is generally considered the creator of the sonnet. This translation is by Leo Zoutewelle.   I’ve seen it rain on sunny days And seen the darkness flash...

"Antaeus, the son of Terra, the Earth, was a mighty giant and wrestler, whose strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother Earth." —Bulfinch's mythology Blessed Gaea, Mother...

"Made in China" “Made in China” reads the label— Shattered on the coffee table: Some cheap and broken plastic toys We purchased for our girls and boys— Imports purchased which enable Labor...

Poet's Note: These five sonnets and song are the product of a four-week journey taken in June to Ireland and through west central Scotland and the Inner and Outer Hebrides. Unlike the sonnets, the lyrics to...