by phillipw | Oct 25, 2024 | FI, IN, MA, OB
Visibly Loud Emotion Recollected in Hostility Your thoughts (on seeing me) expand so proud Inside your skull that I can nearly see Their force despite the bone encasement, loud Enough for irises to file. Your spree Of ploys about me now revealed include A purple...
by phillipw | Mar 9, 2024 | FI, Uncategorized
Remember Life and Death Are Indivisible — and That Means One Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem First poems — and the last — let each one seize. If it’s the first, make sure...
by phillipw | Jan 2, 2023 | BR, CO, FI, TR, WA, WO
Grotesqueries Military Cross given to Siegfried Sassoon for his “conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches.” Imagining the worst might happen, Brooke Writes out a letter to his mother who Is gung ho for the war. His fears unhook...
by phillipw | Apr 10, 2022 | CH, FI, LO, SE, ST, UN
April, August, Autumn Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem We both flirt April with each other, you And I, at first. The clouds, if any, rise In white and seem not tinged except with blue, Perhaps...
by phillipw | Feb 4, 2022 | BR, DE, FI, HA, LO, SE
The Secret Life of Things For the space of a foot, The firefly’s light goes out: Loneliness. ~ Hokushi The firefly floats along in darkness, light, Dark, light. The floating is revealed alone By flashing, though the blinking is so slight That only...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2022 | BO, CO, FI, HA
Tears of Melancholic Glee The lost child crying, Crying, crying. Even so . . . Catching the fireflies. ~ Ryusui The twilight darkens like a threat. The boy Wipes eyes and suddenly he sees a flash Which floats across the air. It’s like a toy That he has dreamed of,...
by phillipw | Feb 2, 2022 | DE, FI, HA, LO, MA, SE
What Comes After Every Beauty How easily it Glows. How easily it goes Out, the firefly’s green. ~ Chine-jo The green is very faint but still is green. The flash is very brief but still a glint. Then after every blink comes dark, between The promise and the living,...
by phillipw | Feb 1, 2022 | FI, HA, LO, SE
Calmest Sex Electrified The firefly Gives light To its pursuer. ~ Ōemaru Enlightenment it might be, no, not Satori. Certainly this winging bug Is only looking coolly for a hot Encounter with a lady fly, to hug Her briefly, hunchingly, and put slick life Inside...
by phillipw | Jan 28, 2022 | FI, HA, MA, SE
Silent Explosions, Please The firefly Gives light To its pursuer. ~ Ōemaru The firefly gives gleams, Green light to its pursuer. Green again, again. ~ A haiku by Ōemaru westernized by Phillip Whidden Its green is life, permission, yes, and go. The green is...
by phillipw | Dec 6, 2021 | AL, BR, FI, RU, SE, WA, WO
The War Poet “a rich nature … fighting eagerly towards the truth.” “I have a rendezvous with death At some disputed barricade” ~ Alan Seeger Alan Seeger Not all war poets are the same as Brooke. Not all are like a cabinet display Of...
by phillipw | Jul 15, 2021 | BO, FI, PO
A Doll Manufactured before Sex Perhaps: Prelapsarian Porcelain Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The doll, its face, and limbs, hold dignity As sweet as childhood when imagined by A sentimental mind, a...
by phillipw | Jun 6, 2021 | FI, GA
Dark Pink Nipples in the 1950s Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The 1950s held its clean-cut sorts, Its crew-cut men, but they were not the whole Array. Some others filled the gorgeous courts...
by phillipw | Jun 5, 2021 | CH, FI, GA, OW, WI, WO
Boy Soldiers, not Toy Soldiers Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Wilfred Owen He’s cuter than the photo that they show So often, more a smiling kid and not A solemn soldier or a poet, no...
by phillipw | Jun 3, 2021 | AD, AM, BI, BR, CH, DE, FI, GA, Ho, LO, MI, PO, RO, RU, SC, WO
Blue Rugby and Blue Gallipoli Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem We do not think of Rubert Brooke in blue, When we remember him at all. We think of Brooke Between some pages of a volume, true To...
by phillipw | Jun 1, 2021 | FI, LI, LO, MA, SE
The Y Chromosome Inside the Tiny Holy Grail All day the firefly Folds in his glow beneath grass Waiting for twilight. ~ a found haiku; original words adjusted by PhillipWhidden; encountered in Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord...
by phillipw | Apr 25, 2021 | AN, BA, BE, BO, CH, FI, MI
Michael Barham Antiques at the Top of the Portobello Road The shops are multi-coloured on their fronts, The pink ones and the gold ones and the grey (Lead blue). Yet then a true blue one confronts Your vision. [Other shoppers wander. They Don’t have a clue. ...
by phillipw | Jan 15, 2021 | AN, DE, FA, FI, GR, PE
Withered Chances When just a boy, he broke the beauty, broke A peony. Then later, decades on He still remembered how he felt the choke Of anger like the pain a marathon Participant endures when he sustained His father’s wrath. It rankled still beyond...
by phillipw | Dec 6, 2020 | FI, LI
Comprising Even the darkness is light to Him. (Psalm 139:11) The starlight pierces river darkness, black. The distant beams come down reflected in The moving surface, each a laser track Upon the water. Like a black hole’s skin, The flow envelopes it...
by phillipw | Oct 26, 2020 | CH, CO, DE, FI, GO, HA, JE, PO, VI
Cormorants Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Morning twilight; in Their basket the cormorants Asleep, exhausted. ~ Shiki The poet notices the tiny things,...
by phillipw | Oct 4, 2020 | FI, MO, OB, RE
Conspiracy Theories and Pop Psychology The history we avoid is what comes back. A son abhors obsessions in his dad And then becomes a monomaniac. A daughter who found mother’s ways too sad Drives daughters of her own to turn out poor In spirit, sozzled drunkards. ...
by phillipw | May 27, 2020 | BO, CH, EA, EN, FI, GA, HU, LI, PA, RO
Earl Grey in Old Imari Porcelain He could have stayed behind his desk. He could Have signed stock-trading bonds. He could have stayed Not writing symphonies. Each night he would Have travelled home to comfort. Hubert strayed. He could have travelled home each...
by phillipw | May 16, 2020 | AU, CO, FA, FI, LA, OX, RE, SP
The Knighthood of the Countryside Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Genteel, the hills of Oxfordshire are clothed With farm fields at their feet, brocades of trees On shoulders and their chests. The...
by phillipw | Apr 19, 2020 | FI, LI
Entirety A hand receives a firefly on its palm And holds wings for as long as they will stay. The moment is a time for twilight, calm, A luminescent quietness, dark and day, To meld together, briefly, briefly. Brief The instant, instant, instant but the...
by phillipw | Feb 18, 2020 | CH, FI, Uncategorized
Field, John, 1782 – 1837 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOJ48Ef1-w My skeleton, especially the parts Inside my chest cage and my pulsing hips, Was made for you. Transmitting bones and hearts Communicate with signals speaking lips Could never send resounding echoes...
by phillipw | Feb 9, 2020 | CR, FI, GO
Dante and the Divine The truth is love alone it is which moves The sun and stars. That final line Of mastery says love alone, love proves The primal power and makes the heavens a shrine, And love not only was the first great cause But also is the...
by phillipw | Oct 13, 2019 | FI
Alpha and Omega So what if that First Cause is that First Cause? So what? Just how does that impinge on me? That CAUSE is more remote than Santa Claus In frozen Arctic regions in the twee Realm Rudolf ’s red, red nose is blinking in. That First Firm Fact is...