by phillipw | Dec 6, 2021 | AL, AR, GL, HA, IN, QU, WI
Magnanimity: Mourning Gladstone Finally Offers a Peerage to Tennyson and Finally the Mourning Poet Accepts It Arthur Henry Hallam William Ewart Gladstone Alfred, Lord Tennyson Forget the jealousy between two men in love. Forget what beardless envies that in youth...
by phillipw | Nov 24, 2020 | A, CL, ED, EN, MU, NO, PE, PH, PI
“Orpheus with his lute made trees” Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem For Philippe Entremont What use is music lacking fingers, strings, And tremolo, the purity of voice Of flute in Grieg’s concerto,...
by phillipw | Apr 15, 2020 | AE, BE, ES, Uncategorized
Ancient Art “the ancients had not that conception of beauty separated from goodness which forms the basis and aim of aesthetics in our time” ~ Leo Tolstoy A moral pillar rises from the base Of ancient poetry and art. The stone Is hard and white. It helps...
by phillipw | Mar 17, 2020 | AE, BE, PO
An Absolute Poem “Its evocation will not be toward decoration or amusement, but rather toward a state of consciousness, an ‘innocence’ (Blake) or absolute beauty.” ~ Hart Crane, “Aims and Purposes” We dream of promenading streets of gold, A gold so perfect...
by phillipw | Feb 7, 2020 | AB
An Extreme Diet I eat from saucers since I live alone. Life’s portions do not need a dinner plate When love is gone. God gives a stone And not a loaf, unless the bread has hate As butter—or, at best, indifference. Small Cups made to fit a doll’s house...
by phillipw | Jan 26, 2020 | AB
Force If only we could read the Absolutes As clear as Plato’s, diamond sheen on The streets of Heaven, clearest eyed recruits To Hitler’s Youth, and Zarathrustra’s dawn, Then we could be the prophets of all time, And times beyond it,...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | AB, RI, VE
I Do not Think the Boy I do not think the boy will ever leave me, But if he does, I’ll sleepwalk through the rest Of time with Holy God’s dark rosary In hand and fumble beads to make the best Of days and nights and years and decades lost To...
by phillipw | Jan 6, 2020 | AS, ST
The Life of Stars Stars lives are always long, slow deaths. They die And live by burning. Furnace-like, their cores Consist of catastrophic heat. They fry The elements just like inquisitions Turned crazies into saints. Crushed hydrogen Produces helium. ...
by phillipw | Jan 6, 2020 | AS, AS, GO
I John 1:5 A damask tablecloth embraced by light From candelabra, and a Christmas tree Awake with twinkling, and Diwali night Are tempting us to think that light means glee. John’s God is light but too much brilliance blights: When Moses climbed the...
by phillipw | Jan 5, 2020 | AB
Viagra I want to be an abacá plant, not Because the carnal flower is lovely with Its central petals clasped there in the hot, Damp air to form a crushed white velvet pith As elegant as lychee flesh, nor yet Because this sexy glans is lacily...
by phillipw | Dec 30, 2019 | AL, AL, ME, MI
Mists Does mist mean something in the mind? Besides The coming of dementia with its fog Of numb remembrance, Alzheimer’s knife slides Right through the brain. Schizophrenia’s Gog And Magog thrust an Armageddon in The very citadel of logic. Does...
by phillipw | Dec 30, 2019 | AA, KO, MU
A-ak A-ak—one of three forms of ancient Korean court music Now think of things that have no connection With you, or almost none. A-ak measures From eons past, beyond resurrection, Those notes and rhythms that once were treasures Of thin...
by phillipw | Dec 30, 2019 | AE, BE, TR
Why Poems are Doomed to Fail Exactly why are poems doomed to fail? What guarantees the stillbirth of their hopes? Because the ones with breasts in them are pale As holograms beside those truthful slopes, The beauty that an ogee would capture, If only it could? Might...
by phillipw | Dec 16, 2019 | AB, LO
Tacit [rewritten] The dawn bows slowly over stars, and they ..Retreat. A lover wakes—and he is gone. So ends a love—and starts another day. So ends a love where constellations shone. The morning star is colorless. Its light, ..As clear as pain, is...
by phillipw | Dec 2, 2019 | AE, BE, ES, UG
Grimm Truth in the British Library Rare Books and Music Reading Room Lots of us are just not beautiful. Yeah? Perhaps not ugly, no, but pretty plain. (Forgive the big-nosed paradox.) Not BLEH, But not so gorgeous that it causes pain. The lip as thin as primness or...
by phillipw | Dec 2, 2019 | AE, ES, PR
A Hoodie in the Rare Books and Music Reading Room? A cruel face. Who’d think a blond moustache Could looks so fierce? A snub or pug nose that Would look cute somewhere else cuts a gash There, sticking out like the snout of a bat Surrealistically hung, suspended...
by phillipw | Nov 25, 2019 | AS
Chaos Theory You cannot see Medusa in the dawn. There has to be a certain darkness for That nebula, part of the antiphon Of Gemini, to raise its purple tenor Curls, twists, to start to sing its melody Made up of misty tresses, pulsing light, A song first...
by phillipw | Nov 15, 2019 | AE, AE, BE
Dark Curly Hair Blue He wears the heavenly blue of Mary’s cloak Across the bicep on his left-hand side. That muscle is not very male. The stroke Of folded blue placed there helps him to hide That fact. Another crucial part is veiled By Mary Queen of...
by phillipw | Nov 15, 2019 | AL
Imperfection as Perfection The eyes are white and wide. They look as spare As Orpheus’s when he lost his wife. Yet Alexander never knew such bare And sand-dune meaninglessness in his life. Perhaps the perfect oval of his face Veiled slightly by the waves of...
by phillipw | Oct 18, 2019 | AL
Religion Meets the Nagasaki Force of Profiled Nostrils How feebly glacier strengths of faith resist The megatons of fire released by you, Your hair. Christ evanesces in a mist Of sweat and hankering. The ice, so blue Before I saw you, is transparent now. No, not...
by phillipw | Oct 17, 2019 | AL, SW
Plutarch on the Perfume of Alexander’s Skin “Aristoxenus in his Memoirs tells us that a most agreeable odour exhaled from his skin, and that his breath and body all over was so fragrant as to perfume the clothes which he wore next him” ...
by phillipw | Oct 13, 2019 | AL
Thucydides: “Because of the Human Thing” We forecast both the worst and best because Of the human thing settled in the crux. Set there like some sapphire to master laws This thing assures the rigid rule of flux Or many faceted uncertainty. This gemstone...
by phillipw | Oct 6, 2019 | AE, BE, ES, MA
The Right Register: Ecclesiastes and the Sub-continental Indian Christian at Choral Evensong, St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and...
by phillipw | Sep 30, 2019 | A, FA
Bereft I like his armpit hair. It shows, a dark Assertion, that the angel is a full, Male entity. This exclamation mark Beneath his shoulder gives the eye a pull Towards blackness and deep masculinity. Contrasting with it are the pinions white Against his back. ...
by phillipw | Sep 26, 2019 | AE, BE, CO, ES, PR
The Presentation in the Temple by Giovanni Bellini, Fondazione Querini Stampalia The Presentation in the Temple, Giovanni Bellini, Wikipedia Formality presents itself in lines, And shapes and curves, in balance, dark and light, In glowing surfaces while...
by phillipw | Sep 22, 2019 | AE, BE, PO
…Plural Perfect Planets The ancient poets are like planets far Away in distant heaven, but for some These poets loom so near they almost jar Against our sentiments. These poets come Up over us like moons, they are so near In what they have to say. Our world is...
by phillipw | Sep 16, 2019 | AE, AR, ES, JE, OI, PA
Wonky Shoulder Christ Perhaps the reason why the painting makes Christ’s shoulder look deformed is not because The artist, Rubens, wants to show God aches For human suffering he’s caused with flaws In his creation. Why this wonky joint Was perpetrated on...
by phillipw | Sep 15, 2019 | AS, Uncategorized
[Some readers might find this sonnet offensive. If you are easily offended, please do not read it.] Asshole, The An adolescent man who has the plague Inside his veins keeps sacred mystery Among his heartbeats. No hints, clear or vague, Will say he’ll give his...
by phillipw | Sep 15, 2019 | AA
Aardvark Dining on Termites …………………………Wikipedia What must it feel like, being labeled by Your teeth? For 60,000,000 years you’ve been Around, but still your tubuled teeth defy Set classification. No,...
by phillipw | Sep 15, 2019 | AA
Unlike the Hyena …………………………..Wikipedia Poor little thing, the aardwolf is too small To be as brutal as the hyena. The back legs, compared to the front, are tall, Thus improving any ballerina Hopes beasts...
by phillipw | Sep 15, 2019 | AB, AE, BE, ES, MA, NI
Abel, Niels Henrik ……………………Wikipedia …..Wikd Could someone please propose equations for The beauty of a man? They must include His hair (of course) and—if divinest Thor Resembled him in any way — warm hued...
by phillipw | Sep 3, 2019 | AE, AN, BE, ES, GE, GR
Up Close and Pulchritude Hercules Musei Capitolini, Wikipedia The way we view ourselves as humans lies In how we see our past. Imagine then An ancient statue of a man. His eyes Are white, white,...
by phillipw | Aug 19, 2019 | AE, AN, BE, DI, ES, GR
Contemplation and Adoration He seems contemplative, his shadowed face So meditative that his beauty turns Away from us. He seems to fill more space Than marble ever could. His presence burns Through thousands of male years. The darkness all Around him is defeated. ...
by phillipw | Aug 14, 2019 | AE, BE, ES, GR
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord Beauty The ancient Greeks loved beauty, all its forms. Men prized the patterns that enquiring minds Discovered, loving it because it warms The brain and body, loving curved behinds Marble statue of the Three Graces Metropolitan Museum of Art,...
by phillipw | Aug 12, 2019 | AD, AL, DR
Outside the British Museum Of course I cannot speak. I’m crammed with drugs And all the shit that comes with them. I’ve turned Intelligence to stupid drawl. The dugs Of chemical addiction leave my burned Synapses tottering. They’re like a man...
by phillipw | Jul 5, 2019 | AL
Alexander He had the countenance and features of Great gods. Believing this, men fashioned for Him attributes humanity must love: Invincibility shot through with more Than imperfection—sadness from desire, The will to triumph at the greatest cost,...
by phillipw | Jul 3, 2019 | AB
Abelard and Heloïse Illuminated When Abelard was my age, he was dead. I think he would have lived eternally If he had known he’d be stiff as French bread Flutes, as sticks of it dressed infernally, When painted in the Roman de la Rose In red and orange (ORANGE!). He...
by phillipw | Oct 15, 2018 | AS
SOCIAL MEDIA: Ascension Let go. Let go the laptop and that phone, The iPad and the Instagram that bangs Away. Turn off the Twitter storm. Dethrone Technology and screens. Those Facebook fangs Are in you, worrying your mental throat Like some sophisticated pack of...
by phillipw | Aug 7, 2018 | A
A & P My mother took me to the A & P Quite often, in the 50s, and back then That market and the little town were key To my whole view, as Proust’s lost madeleine Became for him. The color of that cake Was like the dark orange smell of...
by phillipw | Aug 2, 2018 | AE, ES
An Aesthetic Rule for Life A wasp just landed on my hand. It moved About a while and flew away. A breeze So tiny I could barely feel it proved The threat was gone. My feeling of unease Was just as short as those antennae. It Was perfect as a killing thing. That...
by phillipw | Aug 2, 2018 | A
α — The first letter of the Greek alphabet “And all the sons of God shouted for joy” The memory of you rinses even light. Though clouds today add gray to sky and air, This flash-back makes white flowers cleaner white; I wash them in the essence of dark...