Deconstructing Communism

The Devil’s Details There’s a devil in the details, Those traits we like to sort; There’s a devil in the details, The minutiae we contort. We once marched for color-blindness; Now we muster into...

  Young people go marching, the boys and the girls, They’re thinking like once we did, they’ll change the world. They claim government is a cure for our ills, They seem to forget, in fact,...

  Self-Love Some tenderhearted people claim We’re deficient self-esteem; Yes, a collective sense of shame Made despondency mainstream. While gloom and sadness are the rage, I suggest the torment...

gone the time for finding fault for finger-pointing and assault frantic now the SOS our ship of state is in distress taking water, sinking fast this call for help may be its' last mastered by a crew of...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Hylas and the Nymphs by Beau Ecs Wilder John William Waterhouse's "Hylas and the Nymphs" must go; enchanting, pretty, water nymphs are far too much to show. Manchester...

At Lincoln’s Tomb Springfield, Illinois, 2016 Be glad you cannot rise to life and stand Outside that tomb to die again from shame At Illinois, your home, your prairieland, Transformed, yet quick to...

By Evan Mantyk Advertising for it is everywhere. If you haven’t seen it, you just haven’t been paying attention. A brilliantly colored image depicts a Chinese woman striking an airborne pose. But what...

  On President Trump’s First Year in Office An earlier version of this poem was published with an explication in The Epoch Times. In Donald Trump we’ve found a man Who can the tides of time...

  A Great Divide "...to form a more perfect union" I walk to the edge of a great divide and I try to talk with the other side but they do not reciprocate they tell me that I'm filled with hate I...

  Nature’s pillars, which have borne Earth’s breath for ages, Are now crumbling into dust... Still, more keep falling, Shattered by our storm of wants, as outer changes Echo those inside us,...

  The Exclusive Inclusive I heard about a tender troop, Whose commission was to give Love like a ministry serves soup; They seemed, oh, so inclusive. This sounded like the group for me; Yes, I...

for Robert Conquest I. Each day Naftaly greets a prison train. Two days ago: spies and reactionaries, yesterday: kulaks from Ukraine, this morning: counter-revolutionaries. Snug in his fur behind...

The Great Living Hell On Communism Under the radar I fly Thru' an ever more darkening sky Thru' the smoke from the volumes that burned Thru' the silence of lessons unlearned Thru' the sound of the...

When I speak of history I speak well; I leave behind the past where broken bones Lay scattered on blistering sands to tell Of atrocities that are mostly groans. While you may feel the pain lurking...

  Tikkun Olam*  His mouth agape, as though still asking questions, the Tsar lies at the end of his long reign. (Blue lips almost struggle to explain, caught in the halfway realm of last...

  A Country Song (for my wife's birthday) I'm no longer young and strong and things take me twice as long Might not hear you when you call and I don't stand quite so tall Seasons change and...

  With sun seductive, blinding, thoughts of open rail reminding Of adventures held in albums, slightly faded, fondly worn; I departed with a vision magnified through time’s revision, Of idyllic...

(All poems by Bruce Dale Wise) Another Mass Murder in the News by Bilee Wad Curse He was an atheist who called churchgoers "stupid" on his Facebook pages where he posted "She's a bad bitch" gun, an...

  Let My Footstep Strike the Ground Like a Spear A Villanelle Let my footstep strike the ground like a spear Hear me bound through the groves of Sicily Drawing power from an Earth soaked in...

  Commie Carcinomas When least expected they arrive, an avant garde of hordes wielding a deadly pestilence like slashing, bloody swords. Discovered far too often when repulsion is too late, as...

Meritocracy When the Left tries to cow us and trammel our prowess ____We resort to a stiff upper lip, Well aware that their winning will spell the beginning ____Of our comeback the moment they...

Joe Stalin led his country for just short of thirty years— Three decades filled with purges, hunger, suffering and tears. “To make an omelet,” he once said, “you have to break some eggs.” By...

The Teacher to His Students "The ghost... the ghost of Hamlet’s father, came Upon the castle walls one moonless night. This father, once the king, had come to blame His brother, who had done the gravest...

Read about forced organ harvesting in China here. Photograph This man is lost, dead, His organs taken. Dark; hard to look at: His drained flesh sunken, With hard, dark, stitch scars ... Gone, save...

A Villanelle  “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” —George Orwell From the first green grass we navigate— Through days & nights of wake...

The Journal It sat upon his bedside table, closed, And waiting to keep record of each day: The silent pages still and unexposed, A diary to come, his dossier. He saw it every evening as he bent To turn...

I. My brain just came back from the laundry they tell me it's perfectly clean and it's thinking the way it's supposed to though I'm not really sure what they mean They tell me I shouldn't be...

This essay was written in 2007 and has remained unpublished until now. by Ludiew E. Sarceb Few of the contemporary poets with whom I am familiar have any profound sense of history (and, therefore, of our...

Unshaken Faith Forward Alliterative verse dedicated to Falun Gong practitioners who have faced persecution in China since July 20, 1999   The ground was broken, crusty, cracked for miles and...

  And What Of Art? It used to be that there was a division Between the arts, and each had segments, too. A poem was just a poem, required revision, A painter mixed his colors – blue was...

  Three children stood below a tree That sprouted fruit abundantly; They sought to seize the luscious fruit, These hungry children in pursuit. One child could reach the middle height, One the...

The New McCarthyism by Caud Sewer Bile McCarthyism is alive and thriving in the land, but now ironically it is the left that’s going mad. The leftist gangs see red beneath the beat of every...

ADULT AWARDS   1st Place – $500 Josh Lefkowitz, “A Poem of Fact” 2nd Place – $250 Kathleen Hellen, “Everyday Halloween” 3rd Place – $150 Lorna Davis, “Buyer’s...

Written upon watching this video. Note that May Day is the international day honoring workers.     Mayday on May Day By Damian Robin and Evan Mantyk With their pins and strings and force...

Visiting the Ruins of Tintagel Castle I wander through a forest deep in Cornish countryside And think I see some elves asleep And giants run to hide. The branches gnarled like magic wands, Green...

By Evan Mantyk In the sea of free verse, drifting downward into the bottomless whirlpool of aesthetic relativism, it is hard to not get lost; but poet, editor, and professor Joseph S. Salemi seems to have...

We Forget How quickly we forget the people killed, Millions slaughtered to get a lie fulfilled. All those Russians in the frozen gulag, All those Chinese, dead, without epilogue, All those hearts, for...

By Evan Mantyk Last year, the College Board released a significantly redesigned Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). The SAT is used by millions of student applicants each year to gain admission to U.S....

By Evan Mantyk One week in mid-January this year, in the relatively obscure world of poetry, Joseph Charles MacKenzie’s “Pibroch for the Domnhall” exploded like an atomic bomb, shattering...

  Console her with the Atheist’s philosophy: ____Never mind! Your grandma’s dead. It’s Nature’s way of denoting an atrophy ____In the muscles, lungs and head. I mean to say her central...