Poetry

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...

They operate contrary to the rules of common sense that we hold dear as proof that what we know is right, that we’re no fools and senses we possess perceive the truth. They ramble through eleven...

The Farmer’s Wife He may as well be sitting on a piece Of junk john-boat out on some open lake. The field is shorn, divested of its fleece. The hay is tedded and the rusty rake Is resting now beside...

1.  In 373, at Antioch, Jerome asked himself if he were not a disciple of Cicero rather than Christ, his eternal home; and thereupon abandoned his early love for philosophy, law, language, and...

Bereft of the poetry of his soul The knight took refuge in the house of death Into darkness he went with his mind crushed Wandering lust gone and with his own trust. The enchanter gone And...

A disturbing riddle was told to me: “The city of evil that starts with ‘B’ That has six more letters after that one, Will be, by bloody tragedy, undone. “The nations all love this mighty...

The chicken crossed the road I heard. Which was so silly, so absurd, Especially for so dumb a bird. But when she started to come back She met an eighteen-wheeler Mack That smacked her with a great big...

Alone, I take a flight to see some friends, I gaze out over ocean from the clouds and marvel, as the plane I’m in ascends with all of us above the earthly crowds. From gravity itself we’ve all been...

The Trojan War has finished its long course. Achaeans won by sneaking past the vaulting walls As if they were a gift: a wooden horse. A decade done, at last the city falls! And yet the riches found were...

I wonder if I'll ever see a banished piece of Poetry of mine in print. I hope and pray and squint; but yet, I have to say, that I may not live long enough. The Frogs are ugly, stark and gruff. The Bog is...

Across the trough o' th' mighty Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York, there's a cantilever bridge of steel, connected to a walkway rail trail that makes its two thousand meter trek in standard gauge, the...

Drums lie tilted, battered and still; Grass fires gutter; none are left to kill; Bitter smoke coils through leafless trees; A stunned horse quivers on bloody knees. A tin cup's clank, a thump, a moan...

Implicitly the Cosmos has design, Just as I hold the pattern in my mind Of how this sonnet’s feet and rhymes align With where some latent motive is inclined. One cannot see the sonnet’s form...

Written in May 2010 / Revised April 2020 Trumpets blast and Heaven opens, light shoots through, Gods of all the Kingdoms smile now anew, Legions of celestial soldiers stand, salute, Drumbeats sound between...

Near a brief flash of lightning sits a bird, a white one on a gray and sloping roof, and rests against big blue clouds, like a surd, almost absurd, incapable of proof; and down below some city buildings...

God of men who’s dressed in white, Beard on face of long brown hair, Halo pattern traced in light, Nimbus flowing through the air. Glowing skin with mercy shines, Ancient toga wraps His frame, Fabric...

An Oklahoma Nightmare Leashed from the continent, it flew— on 20 May 2013— and caught the currents of the airy blue— colliding winds that swirled above—whirling. Sweet Jesus, the tornado's...

In meadows green and pastures sweet, My love and I, we first did meet; She watched me tend my flock by day, And yet at night she went away. She was my sun, my warmth and light, There by day and gone by...

Pressure is what the loam feels when, buried and dis-tracted, it cannot function right; when it cannot get at the rain and light; when it, by a hellish heat, is harried. When it is not prepared, or...

The Union army's futile frontal attacks on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind Fredericksburg is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil...

Grains of Time Somewhere through the hour glass, slip grains of time, eroding fast. Past and present times collide, revealing all truths hidden lies. Ties that bond are held so dear, but suddenly they...

The Ring for E. S. and W. S. "my precious," —Gollum, in The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien   I only knew but one tall dude who had a ring with magic powers. He had one large, silver ring. Although...

I saw him standing at the gate of heaven. It was in a dream, but seemed so real I was in awe. Behind him in my vision all was white and lit. Dear reader, though hard to believe, I truly saw this most...

Nothing to see here, they say each breath, People starving, as they feed us to death, Puppets on strings, all of us they bind, Right from our birth they program our mind, Who are they you ask, the unseen...

The Old Brown Carpet Hurray! I don't have to vacuum The old, brown carpet, anymore! At last, I managed to get it Removed from the dining room floor! It wasn't at all difficult Deciding it really must...

Like roaches fighting over baited trap we climbed and clambered, even pushed and shoved while scrambling for some nourishment like love we’d push the other children off Mom’s lap. So certain of the...