Culture

Song of the Crab Nebula in celebration of 50 years after Apollo 11 Long before the first eyes ever saw me __Floating like a ghost upon the night, Long before human minds even feebly __Pierced beyond their...

Of All God’s Living Creatures Of all God’s living creatures only we With subtle artifice create our style Of dress and image, and with painted smile Construct the me we want the world to see. Though...

  Fright and Flight The sleeping farm was bathed in soft moonlight. A quiet evening, peaceful and subdued; When suddenly a single bovine mooed And then a second answered from her right. The pastured...

by Joe Tessitore and James A. Tweedie We are issuing a challenge to all poets to create poems that incorporate word homophones. Call it what you like, but we are calling it a Homophonic Poetry Challenge....

Faust Money ___________________________I sold my soul for silver. ___________________________In blood I signed my name. I soon enjoyed the benefits of wealth, success, and...

The Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is a traditional holiday that celebrates the Harvest Moon (the full moon nearest the Fall Equinox).    Through Mists of Tears The moon shines...

Quiet Night Pondering by Li Bai (701-762) A bed before the bright moonlight. Does frost below lie on these halls? I lift my head: the moon is bright. I lower it—my homeland...

  Philosophers of Marxist ilk designed For leveled outcomes, then they slew en masse. It pleased the Nazi socialists to grind Up twenty million lives—hence, Zyklon gas. The Russian cognoscenti...

by T.M. Moore I had just finished teaching one of the adult classes at our church on the meaning of Christmas, using John Milton’s Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity as my text. We examined many...

  Today I strolled upon the shore Where Grandad walked in days of yore; Along its sandy, glossy sheen Where once his imprint would have been. And thereupon I did behold ‘Twas here, when I was...

Originally published here. ALBUQUERQUE, NM — July 27, 2019 — Sonnet 5, a marriage poem from MacKenzie’s Sonnets for Christ the King, has inspired award-winning producer, composer, and vocalist D.G. Hall...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Haiku by W. "Cured Eel" Sabi I came to the sea. I saw mountains of water. I conquered nothing. *** The fisherman drops his line with bated breath down to a...

Cape Horn They lifted anchor, spread the sails, __Quit shores where they were born, Bound for spice isles from doubtful tales __By way of far Cape Horn— Rough seamen, fortune-bound, to trade __In...

Calling China to Task  The PRC has ways to make a foreign capitalist rich With plenty of cheap labor featured in their tempting sales pitch. And as for natural resources, they have plenty of them,...

I. Half-man half-beast I seem to be A thousand years is naught to me For I watch kings and kingdoms die Who once were gods, beneath me lie In plundered graves they rest no more Yet still I stand, through...

Anonymous Diagnosis In ancient China, a sense of propriety did not allow women of high social status, and women in general, to expose any part of their bodies to a male physician. A woman suffering an...

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  His frame was gaunt, his income was erratic: The crowd ignored the writer high above Who wrote and brooded in his lonely attic, Starving for beauty, poetry and love. These days, although his...

(Anapestic trimeter, in the vein of Edward Lear) On June 19, 2007, an official presentation took place of the document "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road," published by the Pontifical Council...

An Open Letter to a Fellow Poet for Adam Sedia But why against one poor poet, a hundred men? —Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand) What dreams do come to distress needful sleep, to cause me wakeful to...

  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...

  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...

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...

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,...