Poetry

  I Want To Believe I want to believe a scarlet sky Promises sunshine. Don’t know why They say red skies mean turbulence— To me it doesn’t make much sense. I want to believe in love again And all the things that might have been: The velvet dust on a...

New Day Welcome to a new day. I must go Ahead with life as it presents to me I have to forge ahead steadfast and show What moving on and steering forth can be For past is only dreams and memories And it can bind the heart to so much...

  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 That unpublished poem Cicadas' Voices, written in the mid-1970s, though unsuccessful on so many levels, remains the most Eliotic poem I have ever...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...

  I woke this day from napping, and I saw you lying there, Across the room, upon a couch, asleep without a care. The golden beams of twilight streaming through the windowpane, Shone wondrously upon you like a rainbow in the rain. Through moving trees, the filtered sunlight fell upon...

  With lifeless smiles she's sitting tight in the vase. With painted flowers, leaves and twigs she's like a dressed deadman on funeral day. Let days and months pass by; forever she's childlike innocent sans conceit and crooked ways. I mizzled some perfume on her and tried to adjust her...

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...

Some People Did Something On Rep. Omar's reducing the 9/11 terrorist attacks to "Some people did something" Some people swallowed towers, kept ashes on their bones, saw steel like fainting flowers, or called to busy tones. Some people heard the sound when windows turned to sand. Some never left the...

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...

  For Lori Kaye and Riley Howell I sing in praise of Lori Gilbert Kaye. When racist hatred paid a deadly call On Congregation Chabad of Poway, She stood and “took a bullet for us all.” I sing of Riley Howell of UNC. “He knew” exactly “what he had to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9LEnZ9T4F0&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be  by John Keats When I have fears that I may cease to be __Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, __Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the...

Epigrams on the Decay within Academia   Liberal Artifice "Progressives," through advanced miseducation, Have shaken our fair land to its foundation.   Gustatory Chiasmus Good taste is timeless, sound, and with us always; Good times are tasteless down collegiate hallways.   Lazy The profs who plant their feet on vinyl...

Read the poetry of the recently departed John Whitworth at Trinacria or The Poetry Archive. by Sally Cook Any ordinary poet composing a landscape piece might easily imagine a dull blue sky, one small white cloud, and a narrow strip of grass from which a single stump protrudes. That sort...

An Ode to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 50 Years Later A Poetic Summary of Tom Stoppard’s Award-Winning Play As Seen Through the Eyes of Its Two Leading Characters Says Rosencrantz to Guildenstern, “I fear dear Hamlet’s lost his mind.” Says Guildenstern to Rosencrantz, “He says he’s locked up, chained, confined Within...

Venting Be angry, and do not sin. —Ephesians 4.26 We're told a large volcano roils and seethes beneath the soil of Yellowstone. The steam that rises all throughout the park, and wreathes its many pools and vales, would surely seem to validate that claim. Word is, that should that angry...

On Time’s Memory Time is a sieve of our own brand. A net Made not to catch but to let go: of gold, Of fish, of bread, or dust; a knotted mould Formed from ourselves, to let us so forget. Or else time is blanched, blotted, mangled, sold To the...

The Fall of the Fourth Estate a rondeau The Media: the Fourth Estate* Performed disgracefully of late: Delivering the news askew, Allowing certain viewpoints through To fuel the discontent and hate. Campaigning bullies will berate The citizens and educate Their friends to start deferring to The Media. All politicians propagate...

Translation by Matthew Wildermuth Note: In the time of its composition—the first decade of the 13th century—Tristan was already a timeless story of heroism and romance, yet in the hands of a great master—Gottfried von Strassburg—the tale of Tristan and Isolde was transformed into the greatest romance of the German...

  Birthday Apology William Shakespeare was born April 26, 1564 If all the world’s a stage, and all the men are women, myne eye be true, I gauge; her beard doth need a trimmin’!     The Last Poet Advanced in years and bent in bone, I shed no tears;...

Towards the End of Chinese Communism Through Shanghai’s packed glissando peaks and Beijing’s glossy miles, As though to keep out counter breaths and polish glassy smiles, The dazing days of blinding fogs form fumes like whiskey casks, And crowds wear masks like masks still worn for organ harvest tasks. Stretched fencing...

Here shut behind an oaken door I stay, left in a room paneled with times long gone, and learn to know the passing of the day, for day and I await the selfsame dawn. My window faces west, my door is closed against the east, and since I've seen no...

Gallipoli, 1915 There are none left on earth can ever tell At first hand of this mortal waste of war Hard-fought one hundred years ago and more, The stench of death, of corpses left to swell, Their startled eyes wide open where they fell. No mockery of sleep their faces...

  I face the day with unexpected strength, to know we’ll meet when the sun has disappeared. Your hand in mine we’ll walk the forest’s length, with peace of mind and nothing to be feared. I know the day may bring me to my knee, And I know that they...

  O, curse Zahran Hashim and, yes, Abu Mohammad too, for evil at the Shangri-la and Batticalao, just two, of all those vicious men, who hit Sri Lanka's calm. O, Lord, the people cry aloud; they long for love and balm. Jihadist, suicidal, evil tools o' th' hateful Beast came...

  Tosspot tulip, withered, bowed and bent; __Severed stem embedded in a vase. __Natal bed a now-forsaken place. __Glory passed; its bloom and beauty spent. Birthed, bedecked, betrothed, by bulb and bee; __Leaf, to bud, to flower in rainbowed rows. __Fertile field from which each blossom rose __Now an empty,...

  It is a moment or a spot in time, When time is quieted and put away; A simple thing becoming the sublime, Suspended and eternal in a day And all around me just dissolves to naught; I feel my world around me disappears; It is just me before you—I...

A special holiday post featuring "My Cross" by Joe Tessitore of New York, New York; "Pietá" by Tonya McQuade of Los Gatos, California; "The Pietá" by Michael Charles Maibach of Alexandria, Virginia.

They fell into a numbing sleep Perchance to darkly dream. The kettle for their tea was boiling; The plants were rich and green. They stoned themselves on television And marriage habits bad; Their sadness at declining Glory Muffled 'neath the fads. Quizzical they were, then, when Their children turned around...

  Luckily for the bereft grieving through darkness alone, dawn is abundantly deft at its medicinal tone. When a new morning appears, duty abruptly commands focusing thoughts on careers and some routinized demands. During distressing ordeals, structural chores are, of course spokes on restorative wheels, turning with rhythmical force ....