Culture

  True Susanna Susanna, beauty faithful to young love, To marriage, and to parents’ righteous ways, But most to God,...

  Olympic Gold _Eat the beauty and the beast. Ingest, digest until you’ve had your fill. _Sojourn till the west...

  Atomized The Great Stillness fell throughout the loud town. A quiet dust began to settle down. Where laughter once...

  The Vault _The turning sky enwraps the world. Each day, entreating eyes wide-open to This circling vault shall earn...

  Clonmacnoise (Cluain Mhic Nóis) Rocky gray ruins, round tower stronghold, speckling a wide expanse of green, residuum of a...

  Song of the Beelzebots We lure you with our speed and with our flair. We snare you with our...

  Modern Generation Gap I wish some young folks’ touchiness was less extensive, _So more of them could ponder this...

  Beauty Is a State of Mind A young Masai tribe suitor who is wanting to get married, Must offer...

  The Triumph ---on the three lost legions, and the abrupt end to expansion under Augustus The lovely face of...

  Carnival Quintilla Subtly startling Harlequin, Mutely miming tenderness, Yang you are and I am yin, Thrilled to feel your...

  Village There once was a village where everyone shared _whenever another had need. The folks in that place were...

  Thoughts at Daybreak At break of day, you rise up quietly To check on our young daughter, who lies...

  Humpty Dumpty Redux Some say we stole the land we think we own, and that we must return it...

  A Forecast of Fortune Here’s my forecast of fortune for today, The local and the universal too, Informed by...

  The Cupbearer or the Baker? --Genesis 40 A dream goes through a sieve once we awake, With only fragments...

  A Panegyric on the Nativity Babies are cool In spite of the drool And inordinate stool. Babies are cool....

  Tapiola Tapio is the Finnish god of the forest; Tapiola is his home. Only a fool disturbs my sylvan...

  Breath by Breath An orb of light in darkness flickers out To halt the marching steps of eager trust;...

  The War in Heaven ---for the IDF But stranger still and most sublime of all A second vision sweeps...

  A Surviving Maduro Guard Speaks A guard who was protecting Nicolás Maduro said: “We did not hear the Yankees...

  A Bit Player A dorm in Happy Valley. Solo room, door closed: a nineteen-year-old's cozy womb. Our heroine Helen,...

  Main Message He got a hug when he arrived, _Another when he left, But that attention felt contrived--- _With...

  Beyond Minneapolis These freedom haters styled as anti-fascists Arrive like clockwork at all ICE events To foment anarchy. These...

  Out at Third We’d been good friends until I kept saying, “Yes!” And she, who felt uneasy, kept saying,...

  Different Strokes The sin for which old Yahweh leveled Sodom, Though scholars, on this point, may disagree, Is penetrating...

  Violin Vengeance In circumstances that exist no more, A rickety old mill stood near the border Of provinces in...

  Jekyll and/or Hyde When we observe what seems to us to be phenomena that should not co-exist, but somehow...

  Prophesy to the Wind “Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, son of man….” ---Ezekiel 37: 9 Prophesy to the wind---for...

  Qoheleth —Hebrew title for the speaker in Ecclesiastes I know a God-sized hole stays in our souls. The mind...

  Liturgical Loopholes   I. Scheduling Redemption: The Pious Musings of a Serial Sinner I must confess when I transgress...

  Threefold Sorrow by Anonymous, 13th century translated from Middle English by Martin Briggs Among my thoughts are always three...

  The Tomb on the Hill The ancient tomb sits brooding all alone Atop a rocky hill, remote and bare....

  Vilnius Opera, 1993 "Those costumes look professional!" he gasps, Goggling the stage through my aunt's high-end glass. Of course...

  The Scapegoat Their memories select the bad, forget The good. Their hypersensitivity And need for higher maintenance won't let...

  Bird Song At five a.m. the avian chorus starts So fervently you’d think they had not heard That men...

  Ulysses He stands upon the sandy strand alone. He has been dropped off, stranded, left. A crow caws out...

  To Once Have Been Immortal A mountain swollen with the impudence of jaunty youth, unfazed by plodding Time, aspires...

  The Bartender He seemed a little out of place when he walked in that night. The bar was pretty...

  The New Satanic Mills "And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded...

  Mac Modernist All mortal works are destined to decline, And in this fall, doth poetry align, As all inheritance...