Culture

. Fair Game on Thanksgiving Day Please tell me if you think I’ve crossed a line by unremittingly abusing you with strings of salty words not rightly mine but borrowed from a wicked man I knew who’d done...

. Election Correction Newsome, Whitmer, Pritzker, Hockel, Murphy Have a strange idea of how things should be. Then, of course, there’s Minnesota’s Walz Simply watching folks destroy their malls. This is...

. Samhain Behind the turning leaves a red-breast peeks,In light dim-lit by mists on Samhain dawn;The earth is churned by drumming, grubbing beaks,Before the frosts are hard and food is worn.In orange...

. The Lop-Sided House A lop-sided house on the edge of a cliff; A family trying so hard to be nice As their eavesdropping neighbors spy, wondering if They can catch every word said on every device. The...

. Talk Around the Urn In our Sunday best, on folding chairs, We solemnly talk around the urn; A tear, a sniffle, show who cares For the loved one who will not return. No box is there with dressed up...

. A Vacillating Villanelle On Perception  "Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cat’s universe is not the universe of the anthill." ---Albert...

. Truth Streaked Across the Sky Truth streaked across the skyAlighting on a foreign strand,Where politicians buried itBeneath the lying sand. The truth was stranger than the lies,Too dazzling for the mind.The...

. Sailing to Illusium Unheralded, the ancient oracle Appears and disappears, pronounce announcing Creaturely mortality while singing Dirges under breath; rhetorical Devices wringing images of death From...

. First Pick Flamingo They used to call this player the flamingo; They chaffed and mocked; they were full of bravado. ‘Cause he’s the new kid, they didn’t know his skills He missed three practice shots,...

. Jehu Destroys the Temple and Statue of Baäl "—What did that madman want?" ---2 Kings 9:11 He saw Jehu Destroys the Temple and Statue of Baäl, the print by Maarten van Heemskerck of darkness to appall. He...

. The Ghosts of Altamira ---a meditation A herd of prehistoric bison; blood beliefs Depicted in concentric whorls with prints of hands. Stick petroglyphs which hint at ice age births and griefs, And spells to...

. For the Sake of Ten Thousand: A Supplication from New Sodom And Abraham came near and said, ‘Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?  Suppose there were fifty righteous…?’” ---Genesis...

. O Lord, Let Me Not Fall O Lord, let me not fall today, I pray, Not in some vague or metaphoric way, As into sin or moral turpitude Or somewhat less than pious interludes. I’m talking, Lord, my face against...

. "Sometimey” People Sometimes he’s quite responsive, Sometimes he disappears. Sometimes he’s downright friendly, Sometimes he switches gears. Sometimes he’s so straightforward, Sometimes he seems to...

. Contra Computerdom I hold this fountain pen with thumb and fingers, burgundy barrel, gold and rhodium nib, Montblanc white-sea-star floating on its cap. German, this instrument, successor to the stylus...

. Horse Figurine —one inch by one point nine inch, 32,000 to 35,000 years before Giacometti's famous horse   A hallowed tiny horse, but missing legs, Comes down to us impossibly, or near In its...

. Guy Fawkes Night Makeover November 5th! To Guy Fawkes let’s be kind--- no burning him in effigy this year. His hanged-and-drawn-and-quartered doom I find excessive; let’s reverse his fate most drear! His...

. Polarities The only certain solidarity among the Self-Reliant is the ease with which their pride in insularity is spoken of like some esteemed disease they welcome to their homes: To seek a cure would be a...

. Loose Me! “Loose him, and let him go.” ---John 11.44 O loose me, Jesus! Jesus, set me free from all that binds my soul and blinds my way. Unwrap the shrouds of death that cling to me! Let every shade of...

. Fall Back: Central Standard Time Already it is dark: the falling arc Of each advancing year, when the eager moon, To catch the setting sun, comes up too soon. Full light no longer lingers at high noon, Or...

. Lady Gwyn  I hear the scratching of a claw--- A disembodied monkey’s paw Scraping at decaying bones. I feel a gust of ghostly moans Wuther through my withered heart. It’s time to stir. It’s time to...

. Elisha's Bones II Kings 4:32–37, 13:20–21 Elisha died, the prophet doubly strong In spirit, and his sepulcher was grand, For he had caused a lifeless child to stand And speak, then heard the mother’s...

. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5zId3BCl6M . . Andrew Benson Brown has had poems and reviews published in a few journals. His epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, will chronicle the major events of...

. Where Babylonic Rivers Flowed after Psalm 137, a lament at the destruction of Jerusalem Where Babylonic rivers flowed We settled down to weep and mourn And mused on Zion, our abode, Our city sullied and...

. Prayer as an Antidote for Unbelief Just imagine if, while you’re entreating the sky, You were met with the wink of a generous Eye. __A very grave disaster it would be __If all there was to your approach...

. The Venetian Doge on the Sack of Constantinople Setting: Constantinople in the Summer of 1204 AD. Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice prepares for bed after an exhausting day visiting Byzantium’s famous bronze...

. The Java Joe Machine My jiffy Java Joe machineAllows me to make only oneCup of coffee when I please,Convenient when I’m on the run. But in the seconds as it brewsI recall my coffee potDripping cheerfully...

. Senior Village The ambulances come and go. Last night it was the man across The hall, whom I’d begun to know. Another friend, another loss. __I never know, From day to day, who I will see Driven away....

. Homage to Morton of Merrymount To you I pay this homage and devotion: Thomas Morton, Host of Merrymount— You, whose learnèd writing put in motion The court suit that brought Plymouth to account. Yes,...

. S O S Keep the fleecy wolves from bleating. Hold the pack of jackals back. Seize the greedy grubbers eating Scraps from bowls of those who lack. Bar the charlatans from cheating. Quell the yak of quack and...

. The Mask Sin wears a Cherub’s mask And beams forth paradise. “Come in, recline, and bask.” Discerning eyes looks twice: The gate shuts like a vice. . . The Strange Case Of Homo Sapiens At my right...

. Look Up Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on a world split apart The prophet scorned the academic dress of those who had invited him to their Parnassus of the Ivy League. Why wear their garb, when he intended not to...

. The Night My Father Punched the Cow The night my father punched the cowWas dark and windy, late; and nowHis job was dangling on a row,And he was sick of it, somehow__That night. He broke his hand, and held...

. Apologies at Antoninus Pius’s Table, 155 A.D. . I. Rome’s Glory “Arriving at this feast, how proud I stand that Rome endures to succor those who dwell here in this citadel and those whose hands till...

. Sudan, 2005 ---on the death of Dr. John Garang, Liberation Fighter and Sudanese Vice President Garang is dead! An accident, they say--- his helicopter downed by slanting rain. This man who kept the...

. Westward, with Columbus The North Atlantic Ocean was awashwith monsters and leviathans, or sowe fearfully supposed, and thought it toshby sailing west, to India we could go. Then Christopher Columbus raised...

. Their Principal Principle With their hideous lies and a gleam in their eyes They disable each new generation, For the best route to power in districts gone sour Is attacking the heart of the...

. A Roman Noble on Constantine the Great Setting: A villa on the outskirts of Rome, ab urbe condita 1082 (329 A.D.) Cornelia, no. The household gods should stay. Wait till the clothes and furnishings are...

. Peter Pan’s Soliloquy In Never Land, each sunrise brings anew A day of play and laughter to pursue. I meet the mermaids, swim in their lagoon, And dance with Indians beneath the moon. I once fed Captain...

. Odd One Out Moored to the screen, he barely gets involved In vapid, paltry things his workmates seem To swap their saneness for—magnetic schemes On end-of-season sales—their worlds revolve Around the...