Culture

  If poets are supposed to write of death then let me O! poetically regret the beating heart abruptly stopped, the breath that falls like lead upon the coverlet. Let me intone the soft and wistful sighs attendant on unwarranted demise; and taste the tear that springs up unawares when...

a villanelle Be still now and let them go. Their trials and losses fade away. Briefly, they were yours to sow. Children stumble, cry, and grow. They are young and so they stray. Be still now and let them go. Work the ground and sweat and hoe; Plant them for...

on the state of poetry today I see the threads have all aligned __In a patchwork tapestry That seemed at first all but resigned __To the death of poetry. The colors of the patchwork poems, __Splendid though each of them seems, Are mismatched swaths cut off from homes, __Fraying fast...

Traditional Sacred Polyphonist of England Wilton! Could music make the dead to rise, Spare life its toil, move wills from sloth, Bind happy lovers in their troth, Or lift a heart to soar upon the skies, Rather would I your holy strains to hear, That breathe of the eternal life...

Ms. Hayden, On Your Selection of Our Next Poet Laureate: For poetry to rise again Seek one who has applied the pen To that which all can understand, To verse which is sublime and grand. Choose one who writes for all to read, Who is from all pretension freed, Who...

Politician or Poet When in one’s soul the politician calls forth – The poet’s voice withers and comes to naught. And poems become a bedlam of propaganda Praising the party’s agenda. The poet’s pain…  His cruel fate… Has brought censorship and hate. He’s now consumed with different fires… Only the...

The Hindu's Lament As I passed a lonely temple in the after-evening glow, On the banks of the Ganges where the quiet waters flow, When the sun had sunk to rest and cool softness touched the air, I saw a dark-skinned Indian and I heard him chant this prayer: Bhagwan! ...

To Chavistas You profit off the indignance of the poor just like the imperial loansharks you denounce, you’ve murdered trees and poisoned lakes and swore the water’s safe to drink then gloat to announce: “Capitalist pollution is no more!”— by rubbing on the oil-genie underground who, along with opposition blood...

The Poet's Soul with Artful Pen Few will read with understanding What the poet is intending. Nouns and verbs are still concealing Concepts with a double meaning. Adjectives, and adverbs too, Are used in ways that men find new. A word familiar with strange ending Pirouettes on what's portending. Misty...

Cell Block Twenty-Nine I haven’t seen the sun for days, Nor felt Compassion’s gentle ways; My body’s weak, but courage stays, In Cell Block Twenty-Nine. They tell me “Falun Gong’s a lie!” And if I don’t renounce, I’ll die For price of liver, lung, or eye, In Cell Block Twenty-Nine....

by Usa W. Celebride The pilgrims were a persecuted group—for their beliefs— so they were willing for a chance, a hope for some relief. They made the risky voyage to America by ship. A crew that didn't care for them, for money took the trip. But when they got to Massachusetts in...

Attentive to the dawning light, a poem has much in common with a plant: the crown delivers photosynthate through the phloem to earthbound roots—as thoughts are channeled down to partner up with images (concrete ones are preferred) from native stock; from roots the living water is conveyed to meet essential...

AQI: Hazardous Outside, the air is filled with smoke and ash So thick the nearby mountains can’t be seen; Bright red and purple colors on the map Warn that the air we breathe’s no longer clean. In San Jose, the current AQI (Air Quality, an Index I now know) Stands...

  The Hallowed Halls of Know-It-Alls are filled with varied creatures who learn the ropes from other dopes who pride themselves as teachers. They pontificate, obfuscate, and pose as if important– while words they use and oft-abuse are no less than abhorrent. They just don’t care about the glare from...

Presented by Monty Phillips Given that the recent days have been rightfully occupied by the remembering of the humans who never made it home from World War 1, I thought I might highlight a less represented species; many of whom also never made it home from that War. It’s said...

  I am a university in the U.S. of A. Becoming more dependent on Red China every day. We seek out Chinese students for the money that they bring, While the Confucius Institutes keep propagandizing. We bow and scrape to please that country’s communist elite, And neither say nor do...

inspired by the Book of Hebrews To carry close a fishing net of gold or sea-green thread, __a-woven by some skillful hands, with ruby borders bound, a massive net, with onyx weights, and glass-blown floats, deep red – __against one’s chest to press this, while it drapes cascading down. To...

(A liberal-socialist primer for our youngest, most impressionable comrades) Note: 'take the other bus' is a slang term for homosexual behavior. Come gather round me, little ones: you bourgeois girls, suburban sons. I am your teacher, leader, czar; get on my bus and we’ll go far. America is wrong, you...

When formal poets come to me for advice, I do my best to be helpful. I can comment on metrics and diction and syntactical choice. I try to avoid discussing subject matter since that is in the realm of personal invention and inspiration. Nevertheless, if a poet earnestly asks about...

  The Age of Poetry They say that poetry’s a young man’s game, indulged while still limber, lithe, and healthy enough to dance all night with energy. Without concern for funding and fickle fame, artists, in their youth, burning with passion’s flame, can better ignore the bruises of poverty, the...

  In Officio Exsequarium Come, let us bid the last of our farewells To one who sleeps on the retiring ship; November’s breath respires the mournful knells; “Lord, give him rest” is murmured lip to lip. What is our life, if not a morning dew, A flash of light upon...

Autumn Wind by Yuan Xi, translated by Jennifer Zeng and Damian Robin From far off, Autumn wind runs at us in a rush! Across a thousand miles, displacing clouds with sky, (And crowding through the dark, tense soldiers in a hush), Then past the cliff, through countless pines, like echoes...

Hallowe’en by Sheri-Ann O'Shea Oh! Hallowe’en is not about the grave __Or ghosts or horrors fit to make men rave It’s not about black witches and black cats __Or goats or toads or spider webs or bats There’s nought in it of skeletons in chains __Or blood or leering heads...

John of the Mountains To him we owe a mammoth debt, our grateful thanks and praise, For the lasting conservation trails with foresight he did blaze. A “voice calling in the wilderness,” like John the Baptist, he Preached love of God’s Creation – mountain, waterfall, and tree. When first he...

The Ballerina Just before the break of day she woke from dreams of grand jeté and knelt beside her bed to pray. Like a feather, then she rose and slipped into her warm-up clothes to dance in silence on her toes. Evening and the house lights fell. Curtain up! she...

As yet untouched by any writer’s thought you’re still pristine and perfectly unspoiled. Just like a botox-frozen face that ought to pull and stretch, from life you have recoiled. Expressionless, your stare does challenge me to get the better of my writer’s block. Hypnotic blankness prohibited shall be; my creativity...

by Evan Mantyk Where is Homer? The epic poems of the famous Greek bard were the cornerstone of education for young Socrates, Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, William Shakespeare, and every serious scholar in the Western world until the last 50 years. Yet, today they have nearly disappeared from school...

(poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) The Viacruces del Migrante, migrant caravan, which started out two hundred strong has grown to thousands, and keeps on increasing as it travels north through Mexico, on foot, on trucks, these many moving thousands on the go. What does Honduras have for them, or Guatemala...

Birthday Greetings As themes show signs of nature's stay, And time’s propitious dates hold sway, The evidence augurs your bloom, From sculptured years that now have hewn A shapened belle upon a theme, Appears today, your beauty’s seam, Enjoined! auspicious perfect pair, The past, has futured you so fair.  ...

Sonnet 201. The Force that Through the Green Fuse Pulls the Poem. Written in the Dylan Thomas Museum, Swansea. July 2017 Oh to be the Poet! Love the words And see them wound around the teeth and tongue, To shake the shingle from the seas-absurd, To dance upon the dragons’...

by Joseph Charles MacKenzie Read the Selected Poems from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal online. Email [email protected] for details on purchasing the book. Two arts are beautifully displayed in Helen Palma’s Selected Poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (Pivot Press, New York, 2014). The first and most obvious is...

  I woke this day beside the two-way Wye, at peace with wars too often waged inside between the push of how, the pull of why. The river, calm against the ebbing tide, displayed an ease I had not seen before, and I was easy too (or close, at least, for one with...

by Manfred Dietrich The world is riddled with riddles. Riddling is as old and as ubiquitous as language itself. When God invited Adam to name the beasts and the beauties of creation, he showed that each naming was an answer to the universal riddle, “What am I called?” Much later,...

Dark Devil’s Pool, where Spirit of the Tweed __Conceived the first-born of the Tuede clan; __Each maiden fair, and muckle braw each man, __With “Thol and Think” their battle-cry and creed. They built a keep, a refuge most secure, __Where sheep and children could be taken in __When English raiders...

“Religion is an opiate of the masses,” So says the Prof. lecturing to his classes. “College used to be a carrier pigeon For this terrible thing called ‘religion.’ Where all were forced to swallow orthodoxy, And stick to dogma like epoxy. Now all have freedom to have points of view,”...

by Charles Eager William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770—the same year as gave us Beethoven, Hegel, and Hölderlin—and died at the age of eighty, rich in the knowledge of his huge accomplishments, in Rydal Mount, Westmorland, in 1850. In those eighty years, Wordsworth brought a unique poetry...

For John McCain, Ernest C. Brace, & Alexander Solzhenitsyn I season my pen with the sonnet's blood, And do not reason with a moonless sky, Thus, in durance, we hearken to the wry Whisper of words from the drifting brood Of dreams courting a wistful brotherhood; Ah, now I need...

I . The Accused: “Your Honor… And if I were a troubled lad and if indeed I did go bad, it matters not what I've done since? No point in trying to convince when crushed between the iron jaws of merciless inhuman laws. Can I forgive those who would shame...

—from A Gallery of Ethopaths* For those of us who cherish text, There’s anguish in what I’ll say next. The world of letters, by tradition, Was one of grace, style, erudition— A shrine to language at its best, A temple of the precious blest Who had achieved the very heights...

The Coworker A “need-to-know” it’s called in Personnel and I’m just high enough to need to know she’s going through that quiet hell of watching someone’s life she loves recede. A bit more hollowed every day, a bit more bleakly by his suffering obsessed, she does her work, she types,...