Culture

  I Spent My Youth with Byron and the Bard I spent my youth with Byron and the Bard, With Tennyson, the Brownings, and dear Keats— And full of passions, eager, trying hard To imitate their lofty, noble feats, I found it true: the human heart does pump In echo...

Note: Formal Ballroom Dance competition involves five specific dance forms. This sonnet cycle attempts to introduce and describe them. I have also composed and attached audio recordings of a Waltz and Tango as accompaniment. Foxtrot The Foxtrot is an easy dance to learn. __Just hold your partner in a close...

Cicadas There is, I know, some benefit in this, this cycle of emerging, breeding, dying- so brief a time for knowing any bliss, or making friends, or new endeavors trying - only to bring forth offspring which will know a dark, damp, subterranean home for years, preserving life that one...

The Limerick I’d Love to Write by Joe Tessitore There once was a President Trump And many thought he was a chump. ____But none was more shrewd ____Than this big-city dude, Now back over his wall they must jump! Joe Tessitore is a retired New York City resident and poet....

  A song’s composer’s music might reveal A question or idea in such a way That black notes penned on paper weigh what’s real; But if unheard his work subsides to gray. That gray divides back into black and white When trained musicians take the score and play. As themes...

  Birthday Greeting to a Doomed Child a song of lament decrying New York´s “birthday abortion” law, approved January 22, 2019 So, welcome to this world, little one, little one! Your first and only birthday has begun— You´ve grown within a warm and cozy place, and your face In darkness...

  To fight a fight on ground of your own choosing, To force the foe to battle at your pleasure Is feasible so long as you’re not losing— And so you have, so long as you remember. The Right alone as straight as sword to wield And spurn the arms...

  Its coarse name belies this silken treasure, with iridescent dome and spiral apse. Imagination slips in with pleasure, to contemplate an opus like blown glass. Perhaps a queen lived here (no plain pauper,) within these walls of vaulted pedigree, with sheets of silk moiré, pearl-lined coffer, and deep in...

These poems are part of Daniel Galef’s series Imaginary Sonnets. Each sonnet is a verse soliloquy from the perspective of a different historical figure.      Gillette to Frenhofer (spoken by the character in Balzac’s story “Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu”) I’m lost for words, except to say you’ve made __A nothing...

I Am One, Then "In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of Hell" - Isaiah 38.10 I am one, then, who's been to hell: __Cut down in my old prime; One day solid, sound as a bell, __The next day quite out of time. So...

Icarus’ Fall at College   Prologue Dear reader, surely, you must think, __“What could be taught to us That we haven’t already learned __Of mythic Icarus? “His plunge is clearly a warning— __Don’t be consumed with pride— Which is the classical insight __On how Icarus died. “And we know the...

  Forgetting the Tiananmen Square Massacre for 30 Years Robbed of life and liberty in open air, Young citizens ran out of breath inside the Square. Hot bullets opened skin to pump bright flesh holes bare. A follow-up of tanks made sure no space was spare. The man who shuffled...

  Half man, half monster—I am in a maze. They banished me because of others’ sins. Among these walls, I’m doomed to spend my days. No happy ending. No one ever wins. It was the king, deceitfully, who lied— and thus, led to my mother’s carnal lust. Then born with...

a satirical piece in Sapphic stanzas   Every day they come in a flood: unwanted Big manila envelopes stuffed with verses. Mostly garbage—that’s what we sift and filter Looking for talent. Like safari guides with their long machetes Hacking through deep tangles of vegetation, We confront a welter of mangled...

The clerihew is a kind of epigrammatic verse (normally) consisting of a pair of rhyming couplets. The first line will usually introduce the name of a famous person. The following three lines will describe some “fact” about that person which may contain a grain of truth or may simply be...

. . Song of the Yew, at the University of Georgia, Athens a sprig of General Oglethorpe's ancestral yew was transported and planted aside the University of Georgia Arch on College Square, in Athens Evergreen, with rusty hue, Needles clean, with rain and dew, Oglethorpe transported me From Britain west...

  A New Life an English ode With the blending of two souls, in a dance as old as time a spark ignites, and a cell divides; a baby—hers and mine. Conceived in a moment of utter joy, a new and shining life begins to make it's presence known deep...

A truncated quatrain is a form I have invented in an attempt to find some appropriate English form similar—for its brevity and single-mindedness in theme—to the Japanese haiku. They consist in four lines of iambic rhythm, following the scheme tetrameter, tetrameter, and pentameter. The last pentameter line is broken into...

  John Company was the familiar name of the Honourable East India Company which administered India until the Indian Mutiny in 1858 But, Oh, if only you would raise your eyes, take time to look, not always look away, drink in the lazy buzzard in the skies or watch the...

  Solemn Legion of the brave Marching by there grave to grave, Defending faith and family, Fighting wars for our country. Solemn Legion boots in time, Drummers drumming, bagpipes whine, Marking graves with flower baskets Of the soldiers in their caskets. Past immortals we remember In the spring and cold...

The Forlorn Hope—Vicksburg 1863 Back in Vicksburg, the town was surrounded With a battle line twelve miles long. U.S. Grant sought to conquer the city, But the rebel defenses were strong. An advance storming party was risky; They could possibly lose every man. But they must cross a ditch and...

Delimitation To rhyme with proper meter in the cause Of classic forms is nothing anyone Should derogate, but old poetic laws Were fashioned to enshrine a style, not stun The poet into incoherencies By forcing words to fit a fractured sense. Adhering blindly to a rule may freeze Inventiveness; the...

Fifty years ago . . . (it seems Like only yesterday) . . . the dreams, The hopes, and the unspoken fear That marked and marred my Senior year . . . I faced a future plagued with doubt; A Cold War world turned inside out, By folks like Nixon,...

lyrics inspired by the movie Unplanned Ms. Sally loved the parties, spent her nights out "on the town." Her door was open for the boys, whenever they came ‘round. Then one morning when she woke she knew that things weren’t right, She punched up numbers on her phone, and called...

  While driving on an April day along a winding road Through rolling hills, beside the way, I spied a small abode A little cottage in a glen below a bridge I crossed, The sight of which, had I not then looked down, would have been lost. Although my eye...

  We shake our heads, and wonder, “Why?” aloud each time some speeding truck plows through a crowd, or grinning gunman gloats at blood and breath spilled and extinguished by his date with death; or when some faithless man, supposing life is little more than sex, discards his wife and...

A Poet’s Lament - for Charles Southerland, whose brilliant prose style I so painfully tried to imitate and incorporate Nobody cried when poetry died a long, slow death - a final breath, maybe even a last word that no one heard. She’d run her course, so with no remorse the...

White Is A Color, Too It seems strange to have to say this After what that great man taught, Yet I have seen so much amiss That I fear we all forgot. I’m here to share an opinion, Which might be a shock to you: All human races count as...

by Lew Icarus Bede The way I dealt with T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland was to write a poem, equally desperate, in that same allusive style—with notes. That unpublished poem Cicadas' Voices, written in the mid-1970s, though unsuccessful on so many levels, remains the most Eliotic poem I have ever...

by David Watt I recently came across the following “square poem” attributed to Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carrol). Please note that each of the six lines may be read horizontally, or vertically from top to bottom.   I often wondered when I cursed, Often feared where I would...

Congratulations to contest winners David Whippman (First Place), Randal Burd (Second Place), Theresa Rodriguez (Third Place), and Dusty Thorne (Fourth Place). Mr. Whippman's winning poem is below. Other poems may be read here.   For Falun Gong by David Whippman Their plight is real, their cause is ours. So far,...

A Journey to the East by Evan Mantyk is a historical and poetical fairytale adventure styled after Journey to the West, by Ming Dynasty writer Wu Cheng’en. The first nine chapters of the former may be read here.   I. The Mighty Monkey King Confronts an Appointment Request Form Outside...

Bunny by Sally Cook Indebted to a simple spark of life, You missed your chance at Europe’s wondrous door. A conscientious mother and a wife, You danced your dance upon an inland shore. Your simple fabrics catch my memory. Aprons and cotton stockings made a trail To sheets that sailed...

Winners announced here! Write a short poem that begins with one line from any Shakespeare play or poem. The poem should be two to four lines in length. Post it in the comments section below under your full name and general area of residence (“Bob Smith, Denver, Colorado”). Two entries...

Riddle No. 1 So astounding is this part— A major muscle, like your heart. And so astonishing its job, Without it you would be a blob: You couldn’t stand or lift or bend— You’d be a pretzel in the end. A couch potato you would be For life, if you...

Irrelephant Within the room there’s something big, But management ignores it. A redwood tree, not tiny twig? Concern they haven’t for it. Though elephant is in the room, It’s on the mouse they focus. Oblivious to pending doom, Like python ‘bout to choke us. Irrelevant is anything That doesn’t suit...

  Dust to lust to disgust to trust to must to just to dust.     Wm. Walters is a professor of English and linguistics at Rock Valley College, in Rockford, IL. His poems have appeared in literary magazines such as Chiron Review, Foliate Oak, and The Recusant and in...

Streamlined In some alternative reality I have remained unmarried, all alone. Would that have been a better way for me - Some Spartan bachelor flat, my comfort zone? Just having to look after number one: Selfish perhaps, but oh, what liberation! All the creative things I could have done –...

  This poem recounts the famous mythical battle, “Centauromachy.” It unfolds in the ancient home of the Lapiths in the region of Thessaly, Greece, a generation or two before the Trojan War. King Pirithous, Zeus’ son, prepares to wed Hippodamia (“horse-tamer” in Greek). Pirithous’ friend, Theseus, son of Aegeus, a...

  —from A Gallery of Ethopaths What generates the half-assed views That this dimwit nation spews? Why are persons mindless lemmings? From what source is this stuff stemming? Collapse of character’s the cause: A nation’s strength lies not in laws Or money, soldiers, guns, police— These things just maintain the...