Beauty

Originally published here. ALBUQUERQUE, NM — July 27, 2019 — Sonnet 5, a marriage poem from MacKenzie’s Sonnets for Christ the King, has inspired award-winning producer, composer, and vocalist D.G. Hall to put forth a timeless song in the contemporary pop genre. With its positive vibe, soaring vocal lines, and...

Cape Horn They lifted anchor, spread the sails, __Quit shores where they were born, Bound for spice isles from doubtful tales __By way of far Cape Horn— Rough seamen, fortune-bound, to trade __In gold and peppercorn And woo a grass-clad island maid— __But first to round Cape Horn. They crossed...

Anonymous Diagnosis In ancient China, a sense of propriety did not allow women of high social status, and women in general, to expose any part of their bodies to a male physician. A woman suffering an ailment could only point to an anatomical doll to show the area of the...

https://youtu.be/RFqk98nHuA0      

  Pale would be the water ____Reflecting only skies, Gracing not the splendor ____Of your enchanting eyes. Pale would be the moon ____That only marks its pace And fails to see the boon ____Of your much fairer face. Yet paler is the poet ____Whose words cannot express One word that...

An Open Letter to a Fellow Poet for Adam Sedia But why against one poor poet, a hundred men? —Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand) What dreams do come to distress needful sleep, to cause me wakeful to take up my pen and write by Roman candle light of deep portentous...

  Learning Experience The world is filled with rules For making things; and schools Where ziggurats of thought, Erected there, are taught. The language that we use Now hides within a ruse Of passive terms and texts, Protects and disconnects. The work I do is not Perfect and without blot,...

Love Song for a Grapefruit Dear Grapefruit, I of late have been untrue, Seduced by sweet confections of all sorts; My tastebuds languish, and my girth reports Unwanted gain from my neglect of you. The cakes, the cookies left me dull and slow; My sugar-ravaged tongue is all athirst. Now...

I. The Evacuation of St Kilda The remote island community on St Kilda had existed for thousands of years in considerable hardship until, from the 1890s, tourists began to visit in large numbers. The wealth of these visitors introduced the St Kildans to another world far more affluent than theirs...

When our new park enticed me to a walk I saw a dandelion on the trail. Its yellow bloom hung on its broken stalk And it appeared to call me with a wail. Was it a she, or rather she a he? I was bemused: can flowers have a sex?...

  My father woke the day that he __Was in the forest born To find that all gentility __Was from his nature shorn. A base unwilled enchantment laid __That jealous fairy scorned. For in that tale of sleeping maid, __My father was the thorn. His portrait on the cover of...

Haiku   When a newborn cries, locked in a room by itself, does it make a sound?   Fog enshrouds the night. Woven in the heavy mist, a thread of fireflies.     In Time - a Limerick When a beautiful moment transpires, In the midst of the smoke and...

Evening Stroll by P.C. Boutens (1870-1943), written in The Hague in 1909, translated by Leo Zoutewelle We wandered much too late today! __Nearby the final bridge, There where the trail just fades away __We turned back toward our ridge. Behind us rose a whitish fog __Over the dusky lands. In...

  The Moon, torn from the Sun, her only lover, Rose, starry-eyed and weeping beams of light, A mourning widow left to wisp and hover, A torturously pitiable sight, Wan from the strain of sobbing out her eyes, Now crater-like and dark from sleepless grief, Still hoping that the Sun...

After the Rain After the rain, it’s time to walk the field again, near where the river bends. Each year I come to look for what this place will yield— lost things still rising here. The farmer’s plow turns over, without fail, a crop of arrowheads, but where or why...

The Devil at Woodstock I was a mere sixteen that Summer day We all piled in a beat-up car and drove To Woodstock, or someplace we had been told That a great spectacle was to occur— An earth-shaking event where all the stars That lit a generation’s sky would be...

Gray I feel a certain loyalty to gray. Gray days, gray sweaters, cars - gray everything. Gray soothes and calms. It doesn’t boast, or fling itself before you like some shades do (they know who they are). Gray broods, as if to say, “Let’s wait and see. Don’t get excited,...

  One interesting question is ‘why poetry, specifically?’ I am currently writing an ‘epic’ called The English Cantos, and I have chosen to write my epic in terza rima. There are many forms of story-telling in the modern world, so why write poetry, when in real terms, it is such...

  Do I remember him? How could I fail To think of that tender boy, handsome and hail, Zealous and hearty, his muscles in tone, Who once climbed these ancient hills, cycling alone? He’d travelled to England, borne here by a dream; It sprang up in childhood, and now, in...

An ode to Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Sebastian: from Greek “venerable” I touch the pages of your music. Then My thoughts transport to times and distant sounds Where you once dwelt. I think of you and when I do a flood comes up from me, abounds An all-consuming longing, yearning,...

https://youtu.be/Mgo1YAUIglg https://youtu.be/zhbwPHKXU-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5XvAB3keVo&feature=youtu.be https://youtu.be/bFQnvh-pJ4Q

  Two Laws In this imperfect world who suffers less: A good man wrongly jailed with conscience clear? Another whose low deeds he can't confess Though from man's laws he nothing has to fear? The first may sleep quite soundly in his cell, With physical discomfort he can live; The...

  Two mass shootings took the lives of twenty-nine this afternoon. Fifty-one (at least) were injured, every life cut short too soon. Exiting a downtown bar or looking for a loaf of bread, Simply minding their own business only to be shot down, dead. How I wish I could ignore...

  Giacomo da Lentini is a Sicilian who is generally considered the creator of the sonnet. This translation is by Leo Zoutewelle.   I’ve seen it rain on sunny days And seen the darkness flash with light And even lightning turn to haze, Yes, frozen snow turn warm and bright...

"Made in China" “Made in China” reads the label— Shattered on the coffee table: Some cheap and broken plastic toys We purchased for our girls and boys— Imports purchased which enable Labor camps that leave unstable Lives in ruin and can disable Limbs…but disregard the noise Made in China. Are...

Poet's Note: These five sonnets and song are the product of a four-week journey taken in June to Ireland and through west central Scotland and the Inner and Outer Hebrides. Unlike the sonnets, the lyrics to the song were not composed as a formal poem. They are simply what they...

Roots in the Sky, Boots on the Ground: Metaphysical Poems C.B. Anderson, Kelsay Books, 107 pages paperback, ISBN-10: 1949229688 2019, $17.00 by Carol Smallwood Smallwood: Joseph S. Salemi commented on Roots in the Sky, Boots on the Ground: Metaphysical Poems: “On the one hand it aspires to a high level...

  The Teacher to His Students The traffic light turns green. Your car won’t budge. You’re either texting or completely blind. And when you do proceed, you’re slow as fudge. You’re still engrossed. We’ve come to know your kind. Or maybe you’re just walking down the street. The sidewalk’s safe...

Dust My soul clings to the dust. Ps. 119.25 How like the dust my soul can be. I see it sometimes, dazed and inattentive in a ray of light, or settled in a thin coat on a table, waiting languidly to be wiped off. It falls in easily with just...

  Theseus Amazed Around corners through archway and gate Sensing forever the enemy’s mind Poised to avenge the innocents’ fate But a mirror was all I did find.   The Adept A handful of pollen flung into the light A time and a space and sun and night ... An...

  inspired by John Masefield’s “Sea-Fever” (1902) I will go down to the bush again, where the days hang crisp and clear, And cicadas hum their sonorous song from places far and near; Where cockatoos flash across the sky, screeching all the while, And the creek below makes a silver...

  a modified English Alexandrine An ancient apple tree in my unkempt backyard Has skin pocked like the moon by savage nature’s wrath. The top is bare and broke, curled like a parched mesquite Contorted in hot sand. Some lower limbs are green. These few remember still How coiling teenaged...

  Soaked in silence, sunbeams through the shutters, dust floating softly. Stuffy, flecks of mold and rust sticking here and there, a gentle draft. The glow makes all things appear the same as years ago, time as if dissolved, annulled in space, and space fixed, confined by gauds and heirlooms,...

  As fiddle lilts its rhymed refrain it harkens an angelic past. If only we could now regain that sweet voice that was ne'er surpassed. Med'eval times, when hearts were chaste and men of honor walked this earth, the words they waxed poetic faced no chiding for such simple dearth....

She Walked in Beauty a tribute to Gao Rongrong* after Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” She walked in Beauty, pure as light— Like sun and moon and starlit skies Illuminate the darkest night… Such was the brightness of her eyes And shining smile of sheer delight That all would...

Sonnet IV. Cleve Backster whose work on plant perception gained wide exposure in the 1973 publication The Secret Life of Plants. While people claim the fetus has no being Worth enough to trump a mother’s rights, There’s something more our human eyes aren’t seeing: Life’s more, not less, when we...

  The taxi driver took us down From great Mohonk, New Paltz and such; And every mile we got to touch We felt the pull of New York town. And chatting in our easy way— He black, me white, what difference then? Only as humans, two grown men, We both...

Good Captains From daring to despair runs common man. A vane to changing winds is his own mind. One hour he may so boldly think, “I can!” The next, poor fool to nagging doubt’s inclined, His confidence, which feathers to his thought, Is faltering as courage ebbs away. The previous...

Her Love for Him My true love laughs, and angel choirs sing; The mountains echo back his tuneful mirth While Nature dances, heav’n in step with earth. ‘Tis music to mine ear; mine heart takes wing! Into my love’s embrace I fly secure, And tenderly he holds me in his...

These Twins These twins came forth in one amniotic sac. They sensed the danger they had come upon And both held hands to keep that danger back: It truly was the best they could have done. Their need for holding hands kept them in place Until the water broke at...