Beauty

  Within my gardens soul abounds, A spirit stirring neath the ground, Aroused by secret depths that found, Concealed, inspired, a place profound. And as the rustling leaves surround, With stories from the breezes sound The haunting wind shall sing and pound, Upon the life beneath this mound. And in...

. . Boast of the Poplar My common green I turn to gold, As Summer’s steaming, burning hold is broke, unseemly in July, At the close to mollify. I the Poplar; broad my graft, I see afar: afore and aft, Uncloke my leaves at August crest, In golden sheaves I...

  ~ Dedicated to Falun Gong practitioners facing persecution in China Brutality meets decency and then What happens?  Hardness softens, or it cracks A little.  Craquelure might happen when The decency is struck.  Unless an axe Completely shatters bright compassion, right Can still survive, strong, beautiful, and calm. If brutal...

On Formal Slavery (to a Nation of Free Verse) For there are those that call us slaves.  How poor and simple we must be to cling to ties that stretch us, bend our purpled backs before some ruthless lash and ask for more.  A slight psychotic tendency, a dream of...

  What is my body that was never mine, That, fevered, it should waste below the deck? I rise, instead, to face the ocean’s brine, The Muslim’s wrath, the ending of my trek. What is the ball that penetrates my chest, If not the lead that tipped the Roman’s scourge...

  Basics Tonight I paint flowers on my tablet. I wanted to write about deeper things like God and love and time and death which brings me again to the compulsive habit of pursuing the truth. On this planet it is probably one of our failings to overlook truth in...

  "A man’s as old as he’s feeling …" ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge “If the body frees the mind in its quest For youthful dreams to be forever young Let not Time play such games like cricket test* To stay batting because the gloves are hung. If I should sit...

  Productivity Lately a feeling's been making me twitch, The Creator in me has too long sat bewitched. Too idle He sits, and He longs to express, some insightful new thought that he does not possess. I should be very pleased that He's been so subdued, that he's given me...

by Jane Blanchard Beatrice, Dante Alighieri’s second guide in La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), makes her literary debut in an earlier work, La Vita Nuova (The New Life), a combination of prose and poetry that details his encounters with the girl, and then the woman, who became his muse....

“Carlotta Capuccino , ‘Plato’s Ion and the Ethics of Praise,’ takes the . . . view that poetry deploys ‘groundless praise’ and ‘promotes a dogmatic and passive style of life and thought,’ and so is ‘essentially incompatible with philosophy.’” ~ https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/plato-and-the-poets/ The pupa waits. Dogmatically it will Become a Luna...

  Incarnation I: Ego Mater Pulchrae Dilectionis I blossom forth delights on fruitful vine; My grapes are opulent and fair, Productive of a deep, supernal wine Of highest knowledge, hope, and fear. Late summer’s honey, heavy in the comb, Shall never be as golden nor as sweet As I am...

  Not Every Morning Not every morning is as this one, calm excitement for a future brought by change, so many years’ hard work to wrought from strange traditions of my past into this balm. The child me dreamt of serene home, torment behind for those who won’t escape, a...

  Re-visiting Dante “For Dante it was a strict rule not to rhyme the word ‘Christ’ with any other word except itself” – Clive James Inferno Down we went like no other care were there; No sense we’d be bedraggled, drowned, doomed, or lost; All that mattered was now, that...

  Sonnet by Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560) / Translation by Morgan Downs   If all our life is no more than a day In the Eternal; if the years which turn Chase off our days without hope of return, So transient are all things, be what they may: O captive...

Walk with me, though both of us May wonder where we go. Talk with me, explore, discuss The things we may not know. Sit with me, through anxious hours Of waiting and of pain. Stay with me, to share what’s ours In sunshine and in rain. Look at me and...

Beneath Brambles A villanelle Beneath the tangled brambles, look around. Vines creeping, smothering, create the dark. A trillium insists her bloom be found. Canes strangle, branches slip to ghastly ground from hemlocks cased by thorns that puncture bark. Beneath the tangled brambles, look around. The sun strains, searching through a...

Requiem for September (or/ November Is Upon Us) Withering leaves Dying grasses Autumn is here Time Passes Gray skies Chilly days Brisk nights Life’s fabric frays Weary bodies Wracked with age Time to turn Another page Readying for winter Dreaming of spring Eternally hopeful What it will bring We are...

By Joseph Charles MacKenzie, for the Society of Classical Poets Born in 1939 Samuel Gilliland attended the ancient Dreghorn School in an old mining village on the right bank of the river Irvine, said village having passed from the De Morville’s, Lord High Constables of Scotland, to Roland, Lord of...

  Cagney's Last Curtain Call Words shape my lips, words that I shall borrow, Pre-dawn, the sun, yet to fully arise, Caresses land edged by a bustling sea; Joy’s tears form, for I may weep tomorrow, I watch lighthouse lights blink and realise They are beacons guiding boats to the...

Youths for Prophets, Without Sin As youths for prophets steer a course, Towards our futures of remorse, We forge a dauntless faith believed, Inspired by deeds not yet bereaved, And age which slows, and grows to show, Wisdom's what we really sow. _________________________ Sweet forsaken pagan dreams, Of adolescent thoughts...

  'Twas so much more on that morn before fall that we all came to mourn as it fell As the shadows that touched had borne, by its clutch, a scorn we remembered so well From the sky rained a fiery metal as flowers and petals were mired with soot...

Urban Butterfly What business have you here, In acrid air, to strain Through jagged glass and steel On a cracked asphalt plain. Faint, shady memory Of vernal vales of green – Wind-tossed, long-lost, you fly Among this tortured scene, Whose weight could pulverize Your grace with heartless ease; And yet...

The Sea My sleeping spirit wakes As the town’s vespers Climb the stairless sky And the sea whispers. The rushing waves crash On the craggy Shores of consciousness And the sea whispers. Like an ancient song Or some sailor's dirge Which the pale waves hum As the seas surge. Through...

Cicada and Mantis You are known to us by your choral song, The clicks and buzzes of an insect throng. Hidden in darkness, a collective hum Consumes attention like a temple gong. You are not known to capture an eardrum. Rather, you’re thought to be praying by some; Bent fore-legs...

  The bark came off the trunks before the leaves had dropped— the freeze sped up, the shade enlarged, the birdsong stopped. No forest hiss survived, no human sound, no sigh— it was to be the dullest place below the sky. From dens and hides small eyes kept watching out...

  Poet's Note: "Back when I was eighteen years old, things were sort of grim with the Vietnam War and my draft status up in the air. I had just graduated from high school the week before and was considering what my future might hold. The word 'Despair' popped into my...

Poetry before Writing “Greece down through the fifth century has aptly been described as a ‘song culture’.” ~ Michael Schmidt in The First Poets, 10, quoting Leslie Kurke, “The Strangeness of ‘Song Culture’:  archaic Greek poetry” In ancient Greece the mainlands and the isles Held deeply in their peoples’ fireside souls The...

  Let us raise statues to the Prince of Peace: __Cain’s monuments are powerless to bind __Our hearts in summer’s sheaf, or to remind The world of our first fall through sin’s caprice. Our monuments recall the gods of Greece __Whose lifeless looks their marble temples lined: __Blank, frigid idols...

Poetry, as we have discussed in earlier parts of this article series, depends upon the Muses and accessing the deeper self or soul within each person; this is not an easy thing to do. In the 18th century Lord Chesterfield commented on how an individual could be anything they chose...

Proem In rhyming, timing is everything. Rhymes in wrong places make awkward spaces. A rhyme in rhyming knows more than prose. Rhymes are the rings you hear in the mind’s ear. Nature’s rhymes are free: As you shall see, My rhyme’s beginnings are paid in endings.   Excerpts from “Bones...

Higher Purpose Is there any higher purpose As they walk with faces down? Are they sure of destination As they shuffle through the town; With eyes grown unaccustomed To a world beyond their screens; Affixed to apps unsocial, Missing people, places, scenes? If call could make connection Back to Life...

Passing of the Seasons When snow has melted, chill has gone, and winter turns to spring, The tender buds grow on the branches where the robins sing. The earth once brown is green again, blessed by the April rain, And flowers shy peek out the ground to meet the sun...

Nesting Season Little sleep. The night heat did not relent. You startle me up as day breaks over the tent to show me the sea-turtle tracks you found through the bluestems behind the campground. I hardly rub my eyes when you unzip the mosquito mesh with insistence, gripped by the...

. He viewed the world with perfect form But upside down, not as the norm He lifted those who’d been down - trod And doing so, he followed God . . Alec Ream is a writer living in Virginia. His poetic work and creative fiction have been widely published. A...

  I used to find it hard to lose at chess. I'd watch in disbelief the check and mate, think through the game and curse to find too late— I'd bought disaster with the bishop's press. In school, a "C" would cause the same malaise that sick regret: "I should...

George and the Dragon In the Yorkshire dialect “Nah, sithee,” said Granny, “Just set thee dahn ‘ere, An’ I’ll tell thee a tale old and true, Of ‘ow good Saint George slew a dragon one day An’ all dressed in a metal suit too. It were like this…” she said...

The Journal It sat upon his bedside table, closed, And waiting to keep record of each day: The silent pages still and unexposed, A diary to come, his dossier. He saw it every evening as he bent To turn the lamp off, then to lie at rest, Remembering her face,...

Meadows of Corn It seems but bland to every passing eye, These regal meadows dressed in ripened corn; They dance and few can such effects deny, The brows of greener grass their touch adorn. As dismal scenes of urban life have choked Our ageing glimpses hour by hour sans shame;...

  To Solitude Come, Solitude, my first and truest friend! Long hours of careless converse burden me, And I have need of hospitality Such as art thou alone meet with to lend. What synthesis my past encounters blend, What sweetness in the cup of memory Or bitter bile, I taste...

  Windmill Song Alone it shudders on a hill, Defiant in the wind. A strong south gale could topple it, A hard rain do it in. Too many years its silver blades Whirled in the morning breeze While spinning far across the plains A song it spun with ease. Those...