Culture

. Let’s Just Say A friend of ours was asked by some reporter how he viewed the war his only son had gone to fight in and had died. His face went limp, his breathing paused his eyes welled up with tears, and all who heard the answer stood transfixed...

. The Drift of Dark Days November is a time for us to grieve About the dying of the warmth and light, About the passing of our joie de vivre, As we await the bitter arctic bite. Near-perfect vees of fleeing geese are gone From curdled skies reminding us of...

  In Advent Stillness In Advent stillness and its purpled nightsWe turn within and with a solemn gazeConsider well our soul’s more reconditeAnd sundry impulses: the many waysBy which we hamper grace’s sweet releaseAnd godly intuitions misappraise.Within that holy mood we sense the ceaseOf wayward thoughts, the birth of something...

. Motherly Motives ---of the 5% of American women with 5 or more children The greater good is motherhood. Let wealth be vast and health ideal, These blessings are not understood To be too much. The dear appeal Of children overfills the heart With precious pearls of joy that seal...

. Telepathy Your reticence to speak is no deterrent To my delight to be in your vicinity--- Presence and chatter need not be concurrent; Lack of the latter won’t change my affinity For your dark liquid eyes: I’d rather plumb Their depths at leisure, while your lips are dumb. ....

. Dragons Lost at Sea In salty seas green dragons fly the waves, With plastic scales—a man-made guard from rot. Submerged to sleep in rocky water caves; Bereft of flames they blow and bubble not. A cargo ship of Lego spilt the lot, And tiny bricks are drifting round the...

. I No Longer See It on Mulberry Street I used to walk home from school each day, then report back to Pop, what I saw on my way. I'd imagine all sorts of things wondrous and neat, in my mind, with my brain, on old Mulberry Street. But now...

. Notre Dame Re-Opens To touch this holiness we have no right, Nor did we earn the privilege to restore Its grandeur. Bringing anguished hearts to soar, We purge remembrance of one fiery night. No lives were lost—these living aisles of light May shock our visitors as we adore God’s...

. Offerings of the Heart A Symbolic Poem . The songs of Yamato From seeds of healing sprout As offerings of our hearts, And if ever hurt we feel, Swiftly songs arise; Heard by hearts, we heal. For one need not to heal, From voices heard that hurt, Could we...

. Fake Sales “Fifty Percent Off”The store signs all say,But I have to scoff---There is simply no wayThat the clothes I picked outFrom the “sale” in that store,Were---on this there’s no doubt---Ever one penny more. . . Didn’t Look There I looked everywhere,But it was no place,Except for right there---In...

. Meditation on Herbert’s “Church Monuments” "…Mark, here below, How tame these ashes are, how free from lust, That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall." —George Herbert, “Church Monuments” In the Sinai death is mummified— A corpse is a brittle puppet in the sand. Men remember dust, and ash...

. Meditation 1 “Grace has drawn nigh to mouths, once blasphemous, and has made them harps; sounding praise.” ---Homily on Our Lord, (1) "Let your speech always be with grace." ---Colossians 4.6 Grace wields transforming power. Not even speech is free from its effects. Diffusing from a sin-cleansed soul, renewing...

. American Espionage and the Soviet Target I was assigned to Russia as an Army attaché— A legal spy who operated every single day. The era of the Soviets was run by KGB. Just one uncareful step and then they'd get ahold of me. Our target was in Rovno, where...

. Lamb and Lion God spoke and caused a great commotion, putting time and space in motion. Nothing is now, or was ever not a part of His endeavor. That’s why He’s the Great I Am. The stars proclaim His boundless glory, but instead, it’s our small story that’s the...

. Fair Game on Thanksgiving Day Please tell me if you think I’ve crossed a line by unremittingly abusing you with strings of salty words not rightly mine but borrowed from a wicked man I knew who’d done some time in prison. If it seems the treatment you’ve received is...

. Election Correction Newsome, Whitmer, Pritzker, Hockel, Murphy Have a strange idea of how things should be. Then, of course, there’s Minnesota’s Walz Simply watching folks destroy their malls. This is not the country that I knew, Only one that I had come to rue. Not the land or home...

. Samhain Behind the turning leaves a red-breast peeks,In light dim-lit by mists on Samhain dawn;The earth is churned by drumming, grubbing beaks,Before the frosts are hard and food is worn.In orange landscapes washed in autumn rain,Hang soggy gloves that dance on windy lines.Soft bobbing fruits are tricks and treats...

. The Lop-Sided House A lop-sided house on the edge of a cliff; A family trying so hard to be nice As their eavesdropping neighbors spy, wondering if They can catch every word said on every device. The father’s been threatened. He can’t speak his mind, And mother’s been ordered...

. Talk Around the Urn In our Sunday best, on folding chairs, We solemnly talk around the urn; A tear, a sniffle, show who cares For the loved one who will not return. No box is there with dressed up corpse, But mostly wood burned into ash. The mourners show...

. A Vacillating Villanelle On Perception  "Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cat’s universe is not the universe of the anthill." ---Albert Camus Whatever life perceives, life will receive. The butterfly sees ultraviolet light. For us, what we...

. Truth Streaked Across the Sky Truth streaked across the skyAlighting on a foreign strand,Where politicians buried itBeneath the lying sand. The truth was stranger than the lies,Too dazzling for the mind.The leaders meant for it to dieIn the land of the half-blind. With gradual revealing tides,Truth showed as life...

. Sailing to Illusium Unheralded, the ancient oracle Appears and disappears, pronounce announcing Creaturely mortality while singing Dirges under breath; rhetorical Devices wringing images of death From sweet-sleep fentanyl and crystal meth. Unhinged abstentions from imperatives To live belabored sweat for paradise. Unplant, unwater, rape and reap the price Of...

. First Pick Flamingo They used to call this player the flamingo; They chaffed and mocked; they were full of bravado. ‘Cause he’s the new kid, they didn’t know his skills He missed three practice shots, so he was grilled. A weird name to deride his faultless form. The children...

. Jehu Destroys the Temple and Statue of Baäl "—What did that madman want?" ---2 Kings 9:11 He saw Jehu Destroys the Temple and Statue of Baäl, the print by Maarten van Heemskerck of darkness to appall. He saw the flames inside the Temple—from windows pouring forth— the headless form...

. The Ghosts of Altamira ---a meditation A herd of prehistoric bison; blood beliefs Depicted in concentric whorls with prints of hands. Stick petroglyphs which hint at ice age births and griefs, And spells to bind the mammoths close to tribal lands. A saber-tooth lies buried in an earthen carpet...

. For the Sake of Ten Thousand: A Supplication from New Sodom And Abraham came near and said, ‘Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?  Suppose there were fifty righteous…?’” ---Genesis 18: 23-24 Would you destroy the righteous with the savage?Supposing fifty-thousand people whoStill worship You, and still...

. O Lord, Let Me Not Fall O Lord, let me not fall today, I pray, Not in some vague or metaphoric way, As into sin or moral turpitude Or somewhat less than pious interludes. I’m talking, Lord, my face against the floor, The sidewalk, in some random corridor; Someplace...

. "Sometimey” People Sometimes he’s quite responsive, Sometimes he disappears. Sometimes he’s downright friendly, Sometimes he switches gears. Sometimes he’s so straightforward, Sometimes he seems to swerve. Sometimes “sometimey” people, Just get on my last nerve. . . New Priority When he was young to just be liked __Was his...

. Contra Computerdom I hold this fountain pen with thumb and fingers, burgundy barrel, gold and rhodium nib, Montblanc white-sea-star floating on its cap. German, this instrument, successor to the stylus trimmed from common river reeds, Sumerians marking wedge-shaped cuneiform on tablets fired from Tigris potash clay; the Roman calamus,...

. Horse Figurine —one inch by one point nine inch, 32,000 to 35,000 years before Giacometti's famous horse   A hallowed tiny horse, but missing legs, Comes down to us impossibly, or near In its impossibility.  No dregs Of artistry such items are.  They jeer At us for thinking we are...

. Guy Fawkes Night Makeover November 5th! To Guy Fawkes let’s be kind--- no burning him in effigy this year. His hanged-and-drawn-and-quartered doom I find excessive; let’s reverse his fate most drear! His body parts (grim warnings to be loyal) return to London where they recombine. His entrails get un-burned,...

. Polarities The only certain solidarity among the Self-Reliant is the ease with which their pride in insularity is spoken of like some esteemed disease they welcome to their homes: To seek a cure would be a show of weakness to appease the Socialists who want them to endure the...

. Loose Me! “Loose him, and let him go.” ---John 11.44 O loose me, Jesus! Jesus, set me free from all that binds my soul and blinds my way. Unwrap the shrouds of death that cling to me! Let every shade of doubt enlightened be, the gloom of night bathed...

. Fall Back: Central Standard Time Already it is dark: the falling arc Of each advancing year, when the eager moon, To catch the setting sun, comes up too soon. Full light no longer lingers at high noon, Or loiters there long past our long day’s work, But languishes at...

. Lady Gwyn  I hear the scratching of a claw--- A disembodied monkey’s paw Scraping at decaying bones. I feel a gust of ghostly moans Wuther through my withered heart. It’s time to stir. It’s time to start This ghastly party with a scare To widen eyes and heighten hair....

. Elisha's Bones II Kings 4:32–37, 13:20–21 Elisha died, the prophet doubly strong In spirit, and his sepulcher was grand, For he had caused a lifeless child to stand And speak, then heard the mother’s grateful song. A withered elder passed away—erelong The bier was carried forth, with burial planned...

. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5zId3BCl6M . . Andrew Benson Brown has had poems and reviews published in a few journals. His epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, will chronicle the major events of the American Revolution if he lives to complete it. Though he writes history articles for American Essence magazine, he lists his primary occupation...

. Where Babylonic Rivers Flowed after Psalm 137, a lament at the destruction of Jerusalem Where Babylonic rivers flowed We settled down to weep and mourn And mused on Zion, our abode, Our city sullied and forlorn. In foreign land by poplar trees We placed our lyres. For it was...

. Prayer as an Antidote for Unbelief Just imagine if, while you’re entreating the sky, You were met with the wink of a generous Eye. __A very grave disaster it would be __If all there was to your approach to God __Were, now and ever, for eternity, __Dead fingers pushing...

. The Venetian Doge on the Sack of Constantinople Setting: Constantinople in the Summer of 1204 AD. Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice prepares for bed after an exhausting day visiting Byzantium’s famous bronze Hippodrome horses as they are loaded onto a ship for the journey back to Venice. These venerable...