Poetry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBmdmFCtTNU   Near the End of Don Giovanni The terror starts with the entrancing entrance of Commendatore's shattering note in the brass one long, diminished...

Beyond the skies is universal eternity. Nebulous ghosts of dust float around In the black hole of space. A night profound As death itself, as life in its old infancy, Contains a trillion grains of stars...

Revised October 18, 2021 A Psalm of Christmas What the heart of the young activist said to the psalmist by Evan Mantyk Tell me not in boring numbers ___About today’s economy, For our consciences grow...

In darkness, in the mantling of the night, When Earth is calm, and troubling noises cease, I turn with wonder-looking eyes, to please My dulled senses, from the day’s untranquil sight: And first gaze...

  In the Play Pit As Cameron stands, cap in hand, The jailers of New Middleland Keep a straight face As they keep him in place While he signs for their help in their sand. Poet's Note: For...

Here is a blonde-marked maple tree: Stands by the road so stolidly While mourners make their floral shrines And in the night a taper shines; But soon the taper will burn out And yet the tree will remain...

  I look upon how much people suffer Wishing Bian Que and Hua Tuo* were now here Predestiny links us now and forever To fulfill my wish: a medical career   *Bian Que and Hua Tuo: Ancient...

Whether if my promise be known or not, Of which I spoke when lying on this spot, The weeds have covered up my trail; Their stalks show not the seat that I once made, But mounds still show the meadows where...

Those Catskill Mountain Climbs I've walked from Ayers rock to Sydney I've seen all those majestic sites I've beheld the peaks of Mt. McKinley And of Everest in all its might I’ve seen the meandering...

I Think Therefore “I think,” said Descartes, “and therefore I am.” declared many years ago, way before spam. It predated facebook and twitter and tweet, when only the lonely thought thought was a...

A Sonnet Saluting Lady Snow Snow is a rainfall in frozen repose; Rainbow rich in hues, delicate its shape After lightning strikes; its thunder echoes. There is still tension in each crystal...

A godly painting held over their heads As they process through a street in Florence, Each face is free from manic glee or dread And transcends with a tranquil tolerance; They are transformed by the art’s...

“He strove to resuscitate the dead art/Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"/In the old sense. Wrong from the start  …” –Ezra Pound, “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly” “Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a...

I Pray It’s Not Too Late I’ve walked in the eye of a hurricane Safe between its walls of rain And when the winds swept in again I stood alone in awe I’ve beheld forever in the sea Her gentle...

Where lightness finds the passage through the dark the thoroughfare of dimness, where we’ll soar about the sun undone, unborn again, but one─divine the spark! The wicket door unfastens where the...

—a sonnet of differing with Keats Behold this naked truth, and say not Beauty: a body splayed, nailed cruelly to a tree, spit upon, a jeering crowd, a crown of thorns—blood stains and pain, not...

Wake to this dawn like no day before you. Rise to this morning like no other morn. Night is now past and life can’t ignore you. Feel in the sunrise your future be born. Seek every trail the new light...

Clouds skip away from the full shine of the full moon The palace is lit up The maestro lifts his stick Majesty begins The richness of kings at least in human terms How quick things are Violins gone...

April 2013 The snow has thawed; it's Spring again Crickets sing to the beat of rain The sky is dark, the air is warm Again, the bugs begin to swarm Although the world is wet and dark We welcome back...

Faery Dust Anarchy With winds awhistling through the trees and air sprites dancing on the breeze, you'll hear the pipes from Éirinn’s lands - mayhap a leprechaun might sneeze at swirling faery dust...

The Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion is the most famous Chinese calligraphy work of Wang Xizhi, composed in the year 353. Exhibiting an extremely high artistic value, this work is known as...

From Dante, to Beatrice In your father’s garden we first met, a pair in exile, two children playing without a care, in our shared exile. You were eight, I, nine, you in crimson and I blind to all...

He's placed dramatically center stage by Benjamin West—Benjamin Franklin. His gray hair flies. He's getting on in age. Electricity coming from lightning! He's dressed in dark clothes with a white tied...

(Minghui.org) Ms. Fu Ying, a Falun Gong practitioner and gifted poet from Liaoning Province, was recently illegally arrested by police in Shenyang City. This arrest comes just two years after her nine-year...

One night-crawler out on this sparkling court, Dried-up and shriveled, overdone, not red, Neglected to take heed, or to report ‘T was all mirage; to turn around instead. Followers, these, in the...

Click here for more riddles I. My mirror image never is that far, I have five different points just like a star, While I’ve no mouth or tongue that I employ, I make a sound quite loud when struck with...

They aren’t mine, these flabby folds of flesh. I have no clue why they have chosen me As target of their sordid misery, Transforming me from sylph to plodding wretch. I’ve never seen this abdomen...

The lake cradles symmetries of spring trees. The sky scries the membrane of wide waters: unseen breezes, like me, are passers-by somehow touching the lake, trees, reeds, clouds, sky. My eyes focus on these...

The urge for civility in war is noble and worthy. In an epic poem written over 2,500 years ago, even Homer recounts a Trojan War where the two warring armies stop to allow each other to claim their dead....

The End of the Party The blood-red dragon struggles To keep China locked, To keep the whole world huddled, ‘Cow’-towed, awed, and shocked. To consolidate its power, It whisks slight of...

On "Kaaterskill Creek" by Erik Koeppel for the memory of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The site is downstream from the Kaaterskill Falls— where it is so shady, and certainly wet. When listening closely...

In Niagara by Frederick Edwin Church, immediately one’s taken in to the great falls. From a remarkably precarious perch, one’s seized by the enormity of the landscape. One sees at once the powerful and...

“Granma died, my ex tried suicide,” you confide in me, your credabil- ity nil for one more dark excuse is no use. Let’s settle our bill til there’s no more last, last...

(The Epoch Times)—The Chinese photojournalist Du Bin, who was released in July after a month’s detention by police, has published online a book he wrote years ago detailing torture in China. It consists of...

Young knucklehead: Today you’ll bruise your thumb To harden you to pains to come; The sun will burn; the heat will cause you sweat; Dust will choke before the sun is set. When you are good for more than...

Goddess sleek and draped in white, Flowing wisps of long brown hair, Halo hat of holy light, Cherubs floating everywhere. Beads around her long thin neck, Each a world for which she cares, Gazing down at each...

How weird and eerily appears, that solar surge, Aurora Borealis, 1865, by Hudson River School's Frederic Edwin Church. The skyscape is so alien, and yet alive, with faint and dancing lights, blue, yellow,...

The Three Little Pigs —a story retold There were three little pigs, one, two, three —roly-poly and pink, as pink as could be— porkers that talked just like you and me. Building their houses, these...

Avocado Grove On dry, withered leafs Until drizzle leaves Sitting silently The fruit’s ripe, big crops Giant green rain drops Hang abundantly The bark thick and strong Like cultivated...

Nearby a wasp lights, twitching its pointed stinger in the summer heat. As I drive my car, an eagle flies overhead. How far have I come? An ant climbs slowly up the old man's hairy arm. He flings...