by phillipw | Oct 24, 2024 | IN, RI
Apprehension Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem You think that you are seeing him because You see his face and hair. Of course you know That other parts are hidden like the laws Of physics...
by phillipw | Jul 14, 2024 | RI, WA
Wagner After Cosmetic Surgery Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem There’s nothing wrong with Wagner opera that Some major surgery would not improve. Declamatory singing from the fat Voiced tenors, fat...
by phillipw | Jun 14, 2022 | AR, LE, LU, PA, RI, RO, VE
Verlaine, Rimbaud, Lucien Létinois Verlaine’s emotions are too distant, far Removed and cleft from violets of verse He filled French veins with, each line a devoir Of sorrow, since his feelings were as terse As AK-47 rounds. His lines Were written out like blade...
by phillipw | Feb 21, 2022 | CH, JU, RE, RI, SO
Inner, not Outer Rightness 12 Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them … , with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and...
by phillipw | Jan 14, 2022 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Bleu, Blue, and Black: A Sonnet Sequence Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem WARNING: Some of the sonnets in this sequence may be very...
by phillipw | May 28, 2021 | ES, RI, SE, WA
Thine Own Self This river takes a beam of light straight through Itself, right through it to its lowest part If clear enough. The current is still true To water’s self. The water does not start To break its molecule or try to be Some other element, say...
by phillipw | Apr 21, 2021 | AR, FR, MO, PO, RI
Rimbaud’s Tiny Kisser Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem …….. It’s worse than that unsmiling mouth implies. It’s more a grimness, executioner Made flesh and teeth. If he were...
by phillipw | Mar 28, 2021 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Lacking Almost All Common Sense when Combined…and After that Too Late “Where the white cliffs were ghostlike in the dawn, And after dawn were deathlike.” ~Lancelot, Edwin Arlington Robinson If only Arthur and poor Paul had read Those words by Robinson, they...
by phillipw | Mar 26, 2021 | AR, GA, MO, PA, RI, VE
Irradiated Irises Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem His eyes were deep clairvoyant blue, and blue Of lighter kind, both present in his face At once for Paul to fall in love with. True To...
by phillipw | Nov 27, 2020 | AR, GA, HE, Ho, LO, MA, PA, RI, ST, UN, VE
Wedded Love vs. Armpit Stench Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Romances sans Paroles (by Verlaine) has a “consistently high standard … and reflects his troubled emotional state over the rupture...
by phillipw | Nov 23, 2020 | AR, GA, Ho, PA, RI, SA, SE, VE
LONG YEARS Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “You can be free only with me, and I swear to you I will behave in the future. I am sorry for my part in the wrong. My mind is clear at last. ...
by phillipw | Nov 15, 2020 | AR, GA, Ho, LO, PA, RI, RO, SE, SN, VE
Éclats de Neige Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “éclats de neige”~ Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations Paul often thought a boy has splinters in His eyes, his irises, his pupils, light...
by phillipw | Aug 16, 2020 | RI, SW
Pennage Serendipity In shrouds a stretch of river there beneath The overhanging limbs of dark, dark trees (The Thames itself blocked out from light like death) Is suddenly a space where swans at ease Are floating like the souls of angels on The surface of the...
by phillipw | Jun 30, 2020 | MA, OM, RI, SE
Constitutional Slaughter: Connecticut, Nevada, Florida, Texas, Texas Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse “Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate.” ~ Medea, Euripides The women don’t do this, except that queen. It’s mostly males who...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | AR, DE, GA, Ho, PA, PH, PO, RI, SA, VE
Verlaine Agonistes “for me Rimbaud is an ever-living reality, a sun aflame within me, a sun that will not suffer eclipse” ~ Paul Verlaine long after Arthur’s death The Philistines bored out the strongman’s eyes With iron-cold...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | AR, OS, RI, WI
Each Autre Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Four days apart their births and just a few Miles separating them, these two young men, Though geniuses, were destined not to screw Each other. ...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | AR, OS, PA, RI, VE, WI
A Found Sonnet: Blue and Black Gemstones Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “I cannot accept this death. It’s been some Years now since we’ve seen each other. Rimbaud, Though (Arthur’s art and face),...
by phillipw | May 20, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Four Hundred and Twenty Some Odd Days Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem When genius lived in London, English brains Were unaware. When genius loved among Them, drinking gin is what they did. The...
by phillipw | May 19, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Narrow Rooms It started in a room made narrow by Paul’s Belle-mère. Lice-filled Arthur bailed from this Before the bourgeois ones could make him fly At their command. He fled to the abyss, The alleyed chasm of streetlife. When Paul Found Rimbaud after...
by phillipw | May 13, 2020 | FE, ME, MU, RI, RO, WA
The Descent from the Scottish Highlands and Luzern Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The melodies that go on long and fine, And long and long, without a gap or pause Streamed out from Mendelssohn. An...
by phillipw | May 13, 2020 | DO, GE, HE, NI, RI, TR, WA
What Really Matters Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Heroic happenings in legends bear A factuality more sacred than Plain data. The cutting of Samson’s hair Is consequential to his threatened clan...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | AR, DE, LO, PO, RI
Veiled as for a Funeral, Not a Wedding We have that face. We have those written lines. It’s difficult to say just which is more Poetic, hero doomed by death’s designs, Or poetry abandoned by the whore, That smelly adolescent. Words obscure The meanings and the edges...
by phillipw | Mar 9, 2020 | AR, PO, RI, VE
Absinthe-minded Charlatan “The most curious thing about the transformation of the sensorial apparatus—the phenomenon, at least, that struck me most forcibly in the experiments I conducted on myself— is that all sensations are perceived by all senses at...
by phillipw | Mar 9, 2020 | AR, LO, PA, RI, RO, VE
What Kind of Place is Fit for Men? …………“L’allée est sans fin” ~ Paul Verlaine What kind of place is fit for hommes who want To make a London nest together, one Where poetry is brooded, a romaunt Perhaps, or maybe some...
by phillipw | Mar 9, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, SA, VE
“Operating Live on Poetry” —Delahaye in Divagations So. Just another boozing, druggy day. That’s how French poets’ love affairs are spent. They sit with friends in an ivre café, And Rimbaud says, “Try an experiment, Hommes. Put your hands on the table.” ...
by phillipw | Mar 8, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Narrow Rooms It started in a room made narrow by Paul’s Belle-mère. Lice-doomed Arthur bailed from this Before the bourgeois ones could make him fly At their command. He fled to the abyss, The alleyed chasm of streetlife. When Paul Found Rimbaud after...
by phillipw | Mar 8, 2020 | AR, LO, RI, VE
What We Learn in the Great College Street of Knowledge The worst conclusion to a crimson bout Of love is truth. We sniff the smell of facts And they are ugly mumbles. With his snout The poet gets the scent. His heart reacts Like pack hounds to the trail a cognac fox...
by phillipw | Mar 8, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Rimbaud in Camden “an angel in exile” ~ Paul Verlaine Imagine then an exiled angel. How Would he appear, this creature, if he were More real than metaphor? His lids would bow Down over such blue eyes with eyelash fur That azure would become...
by phillipw | Mar 2, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Canines Having Trouble Disengaging “A kid Casanova, but even more so a certified expert in love-affairs, doesn’t he laugh with his flaring nostrils and his handsome dimpled chin … ?” ~ Paul Verlaine, Les Poètes Maudits ………. Promiscuous in...
by phillipw | Mar 1, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Sweetly Bitter Mouth at Sixteen Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Sublime this child with lips which long have been As sensual as ancient memories, eyes So lost in gold mythologies that twin To Lucifer...
by phillipw | Feb 26, 2020 | AR, LO, PA, RI, RO, VE
The Products of Love’s Smog The older poet dreamed perhaps of past Emotions with the younger one (of France And beds), dreamed, dreamed in daylight and the last Night hour as wakefulness began to prance Across subconsciousness of London’s dawn. The elder man created...
by phillipw | Feb 26, 2020 | AR, DE, LO, PA, RI, RO, VE
HMS Implacable “Because you loved me as it had to be.” ~ Paul Verlaine in “To Arthur Rimbaud” We love the thought of love and fate combined. We love the grand idea that lust is out Of our control like earthquakes. Disinclined To...
by phillipw | Feb 25, 2020 | AR, RI
Under the Sign of the Scorpions: Teachers as Consummate Astrologers A teacher in Rimbaud’s third year of school, M. Pérette, remarked, “Intelligent, as much as you want, but he has eyes and a smile that I do not like. He will come to a bad end. In any case,...
by phillipw | Feb 25, 2020 | RE, RI
Our National Poet Living in London and then at 165 King’s Road, Reading? More nights in London than in Paris—and Rimbaud lived in Berkshire, too; in Reading 165 King’s Road, Reading, where Rimbaud lived and worked He wrote prose poems and free verse, not bland,...
by phillipw | Feb 25, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Marriage Proposal Proposal: To exhume the bodies of Two poets, Arthur Rimbaud and Verlaine, And re-entomb them with the one above The other in a common grave—two men Together once again and once again, Forever, one on top. The digging will Be done in...
by phillipw | Feb 25, 2020 | AR, LO, PA, RI, VE
The Shining While Arthur wears a top hat, Paul has shoes Shined—nothing here of poetry. A pipe Pollutes the air, unpoetically. Booze Bridgeman Art Library Ain’t that poetic either, both guys ripe With body odor. Try to write some verse With...
by phillipw | Feb 24, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
A Sentimental Conversation Rambunctiousness invaded Paris for A while when Rimbaud arrived, an army Of one belligerent. Soul of a whore And manners of a rapist of the smarmy Bourgeoisie made him a Communard of Less than a year’s time there. Arthur ran Away to...
by phillipw | Feb 24, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
A Dining Room with Keyboard Music The fourteen months or so that Rimbaud spent In London aren’t enough to make the claim That he was England’s modern man who went To places other poets couldn’t name. Verlaine was pushing boundaries, too, in lines, But his modernity is...
by phillipw | Feb 24, 2020 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Miss Manners I am an ephemeral and a not too discontented citizen of a metropolis considered modern because all known taste has been avoided in the furnishings and the exterior of the houses as well as in the plan of the city. ~ Rimbaud on London A...
by phillipw | Feb 19, 2020 | RI
The Trinity Has Existed in Lapis Passion for Eternity ……………….. “An individual’s poetic quality is a function of his gift of love” ~ Robert Goffin “Sa seule beauté était dans ses yeux d’un bleu pale irradié de bleu foncé, les plus...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | LO, RI, RO, VE
Pleasure, Prussian Pain: Verlaine Remembers Arthur’s Eyes Your eyes went blue in through my heart, straight through The blue that was my heart and bored through night, Straight through my night and out into a new Blue dawn, a morn so full of blue and might That...
by phillipw | Feb 15, 2020 | LO, RI, RO, VE
Verlaine Conducts the Tribunal: Rimbaud’s Eyes I try to fathom why he has that haze In fluorite eyes. No one can tell. I’ve asked His friends about that gaze. They all go blank. Not one of them when tasked To give interpretation of his black And...
by phillipw | Feb 14, 2020 | RI, VE
Lucien Viotti, Madame Mathilde Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud A wife cannot compete with someone who Has rhymed himself with vacuum. The blank A dead friend leaves behind is perfect blue. The charms a mindless wife can offer rank More like a lukewarm brown contrasted...
by phillipw | Feb 13, 2020 | RI
St. Teresa Magdalene “his sky-blue eyes that come out nearly white in the photographs of the day” ~ Edmund White “cruel light blue eyes” and his “strong red mouth with the bitter fold in it—mysticism and sensuality in spades” ~ Paul...
by phillipw | Jan 27, 2020 | RI, VE
Four Hundred & Twenty Some Odd Days When genius lived in London, English brains Were unaware. When genius loved among Them, drinking gin is what they did. The chains He broke in poetry and sex with tongue And knife and fists, the bindings he destroyed,...
by phillipw | Jan 26, 2020 | RI
Sacerdotal Insects Young Rimbaud kept live lice in special seats Up on his head for one specific need. He didn’t leave’em in his guestroom sheets To cause insult. He needed them to breed There so that, when in passing through the rues De Paris he...
by phillipw | Jan 26, 2020 | RI, VE
A Found Sonnet: Blue and Black Gemstones “I cannot accept this death. It’s been some Years now since we’ve seen each other. Rimbaud, Though, Arthur’s art and face, still shine out from The back of my dark brain. Rimbaud is a low, Bright sun which burns inside me,...
by phillipw | Jan 26, 2020 | RI, WI
[Arthur Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde were born four days apart from each other. They both died and are buried in France. Wilde arrived as a student at Oxford at the same time that Rimbaud was abandoning poetry and teaching French in the large house of his employer in...
by phillipw | Jan 24, 2020 | RI, VE
Difficult to See Intimations of Immortality We ride past, jostling on the bus, and can’t Make out the wording on the plaque; so close, And yet importance can be missed. We pant To make connection and to get a dose Of greatness or at least of meaning. Paul Reached...
by phillipw | Jan 24, 2020 | RI, VE
Séance Verlaine was more a séance poet than A seer or prophetic voice. He saw The vestiges of love, a phantom man When love was gone, and souvenirs, not raw And brutal facts. Paul called up from his past Misshapen memories. He did not want To...
by phillipw | Jan 24, 2020 | OE, PR, RI, VE
The Deaths of Mad Queens The heroines in Racine’s tragedies Are monsters, dignities destroyed by heat Of passion harder than a marble frieze, Rock lust for man or boy. Queens’ hearts replete With rage and love, this royalty is blind As Oedipus’s eyes with jelly...
by phillipw | Jan 24, 2020 | RI, VE
[Verlaine describes Rimbaud in London] His Eyes, His Hair, the Seasons in London The overarching springtime blue in May Was set with bluebell darker tints in flecks. Those irises were perfect in the way A nearly purple paragon respects The imperfection of the...
by phillipw | Jan 24, 2020 | RI, VE
Merry Go Round Glamor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rQvb75Girg A large, significant proportion of The gay and bi community today Is desperate for the story of the love Of swirling Rimbaud and Verlaine to bray Out gaily as bright carousel horses’ Tunes, twirling...
by phillipw | Jan 24, 2020 | RI, VE
Emancipation Proclamation “You’re free alone with me,” the tyrant wrote To Paul when he had made his cowardly Decision and had fled by pettish boat. “I, only, offer you your liberty.” This freedom was la liberté of slaves, Though. La égalité was not discussed, Nor...
by phillipw | Jan 23, 2020 | RI, VE
Verlaine Afterwards Allow my dizzy head to loll against Your chest. Your kisses ringing like a bell, Because they are the last, are love condensed. Those kisses are as lovely as the knell Of wedding chimes for grooms who do not know Tomorrow. Let me drowse...
by phillipw | Jan 23, 2020 | RI, VE
Blackest Star “Poetry is a Destructive Force.” ~ Wallace Stevens “Panteurs cruelles” ~ Arthur Rimbaud, “Voyelles” A hurricane’s extremest blast is like The force of Rimbaud. Alexandrines fell Like Poland’s cavalry when the Third Reich...
by phillipw | Jan 23, 2020 | RI, VE
The Terrors of the Earth “Discussing, between moves, iamb and spondee, Anacoluthon” ~ Conrad Aiken, Preludes for Memnon, LVI Wild Christ will have revenges on you both That all the world shall — God will sear your things Till charred...
by phillipw | Jan 23, 2020 | RI, VE
Distant Intervals “It is the distant dramas of friends that are hardest to conjure up.” ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, 239 “And it’s only at distant intervals that I see the friend to whom I’ve given all my affection” ~...
by phillipw | Jan 23, 2020 | LO, RI, VE
[This one is written from the viewpoint of Verlaine. Rimbaud composed a prose poem that seems to be written in the voice of Verlaine thinking about Rimbaud, “He wants to live life as a sleepwalker” (Deliria I.) Here I have turned that prose poem on its...
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 22, 2020 | LO, RI, VE
Uncertainty Leading to Certainty The London fog was lush, more lush than French Fogs anywhere, more plush than Paris fogs At least. It bordered on the louche, its stench A prophecy of LA’s stringent smogs. Verlaine remarked that London’s murk was worse, That...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | RI, VE
In Despondent Mood “in despondent mood” ~ Verlaine, “Birds in the Night,” Romances Sans Paroles The Anglo-Saxons said that life was bleak As one bird flying in a stormy night Which enters through a window like a streak And out the other window of the bright Hall...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | RI, VE
How Something Solid as this Man “The shadow of the trees in the misty river dies like smoke” ~ Verlaine, Romances sans Paroles How something solid as this man beside Me there dissolved to nothing more than smoke Mixed in with shadows of a willow, oak, And hulking...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | RI, VE
James 3:5-8 The greatest writer in the history Of modern poésie française was slapped Because he mocked his only devotee. Rimbaud mocked Verlaine and Verlaine snapped. He smacked the boy across the face with lunch. The fish he’d bought for them to eat...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | LI, RI, VE
Rimbaud, Magyars, and the Perfect Number Seven Research reveals that when the Magyars Invaded Hungary, they counted up Not quite to seven. And in Verlaine’s stars Barely anything mattered but the cup Arthur offered him to drink. Verlaine should Undoubtedly have...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | RI, VE
Arthur Rimbaud, Lucien Létinois, Frédéric-Auguste Cazals The decades wane away and Verlaine hears The man in Africa expressing in His silence what he said to Paul those years Ago when he in melancholic sin Repented in a Belgian prison. “You, Little poet of straw,...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | RI, VE
“Il faut, voyez-vous, nous pardonner les choses” ~ Paul Verlaine in Romances Sans Paroles [ “I need you to pardon some things.”] “Let’s be two children,” Paul suggests, leave The cabbage life behind, and live on love Outside the world’s stubborn facts. Let’s cleave...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | RI
Autre Refusing brings on passion. Saying No Ignites the twilight, higher truths. He chose To cancel Oui and launched us to the snow On top of cruel mountains to impose A fire of thought and coldly sharpened heat Where others would have settled for...
by phillipw | Jan 22, 2020 | RI
That All Things Work Together The Lion Heart left Palestine to save His threatened throne in England, a failure If ever there was one. And then a grave Mischance occurred. He became the jail lure For crippling royal ransom, the sum so vast It beggared England’s...
by phillipw | Jan 21, 2020 | RI, VE
The Autumn Sings Exhilaration “Scarcely sad the autumn seems Gently recurring” ~ Paul Verlaine, “La fuite est verdatre et rose,” Romances sans paroles The autumn sings exhilaration through Its own potential sadness. This time fall Is focusing on frantic leaves and...
by phillipw | Jan 20, 2020 | LO, RI, VE
La Danse Interminable Et vous, les loups maigres ~ Romances sans paroles, Verlaine The moon is closed inside a copper shell, A casing of your manufacture, lad. Although my destiny’s a minor hell Compared to others’ sufferings, it’s sad Enough for me. The landscape...
by phillipw | Jan 20, 2020 | RI, VE
Revenez, Revenez, Chers Amis Come back to us, Verlaine, Rimbaud! We need You at this hour. We need you so that you Can edify us, show us not to breed False freedoms. None of us wants Xanadu Heaved up by license, anger or your faux Amour. We do not want your...
by phillipw | Jan 20, 2020 | RI, VE
July the Fourth, 1873 Rimbaud recalls his older man to crawl To Arthur’s bed in Camden and return To more abuse and weak man’s pain, but Paul Refuses. He has had enough to burn His heart forever and to brand it with Hard scars to last for an eternity And so he...
by phillipw | Jan 20, 2020 | RI
Un Ange Ivre He came as angel and as thug, as gay, And mad as drug-infested members in A cholo gang. He didn’t have to play The part of wild provincial boy akin To Mozart crossed with Noble Savages: That’s what he was. He was a cannibal, Incestuous in his...
by phillipw | Jan 20, 2020 | RI, VE
Speaking of Lice: And Only Man is Vile “unbelievably brutal, loud-mouthed people in the streets” ~ Paul Verlaine on the people of London “To see oursels as ithers see us” ~ Robert Burns He said that they were small and skinny, too, Emaciated, most especially The...
by phillipw | Jan 19, 2020 | RI, VE
Illuminations, 35 Howland Street No more than just a single, husk-like room, Their cube in Howland Street became the place Where greatness found inception, found its womb. While huddling in this bolthole from disgrace, Paul wrote adagios, pale Romances sans Paroles,...
by phillipw | Jan 19, 2020 | LO, RI
L’Amour: The Sonnet Rimbaud Would Have Written If He Had Demon Possessed Paul Verlaine It’s less than breaths of shadows from a ghost. It’s farther than the farthest seashore of The most remote black planet. It’s the most Sought after of the hopes of women. Love....
by phillipw | Jan 19, 2020 | RI, VE
On a Leash Rimbaud remarked, “Dogs are liberals,” to Gastineau, the Mautés’ loving dog. A “doll-faced” time bomb ticked away with blue, Blue eyes, light blue and deep, until the fog Of future London filled that Paris home. He was an Ostrogothic army in...
by phillipw | Jan 17, 2020 | AR, RI
Arthur Rimbaud – Encyclopedie Larousse ….. Divide his face in half. The side seen on The viewer’s left is broader, narrow-eyed And fuller lipped, the eyebrow wider drawn By God—or whoever. Jekyll and Hyde Are called to mind since this side with crimped,...
by phillipw | Jan 15, 2020 | RI, VE
The Time That’s Stretched The time that’s stretched between Verlaine and us Has painted in a scumble on his scenes With Arthur. It’s as if some sort of pus Has been brushed over them like filthy jeans Encrusted with the grime of tears. A scrim Obscures our view...
by phillipw | Jan 15, 2020 | RI, VE
Synesthesia Verlaine spun out his poetry like silk From spider abdomens, but it had hues Of melody, it sounds the touch of milk, And all came also from the fragrant blues Of Rimbaud’s irises and, more, from deep Within the boy’s manly soul which sang In...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | RI, VE
Getting Away with It Socrates said, “Alcibiades is unhappy because everywhere Alcibiades goes, Alcibiades takes himself with him.” If you were in a rented room with Paul On Howland Street, you too would want to spend Your time away from him, away from all That...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | RI
Forbidden Fruit/Fruit interdit Imagine then a little boy who finds A house set back alone in orange trees That has its windows barred but has no blinds. Inside a wonder world of toys he sees, The sorts of toys which everyone like him Would want. He tiptoes high to...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | RI, VE
An Alabaster Submarine: A Shakespearean Sonnet by Paul While They Lived in London and Accidentally Misplaced by Arthur Recently Discovered and Englished by Phillip Whidden …………The Gospel of Saint Luke 7:36-50 A submarine cathedral is the place...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | RI, VE
Heartless Books He spiralled through erotic books complete With spelling errors, and Church Latin ones, Complete with telling errors, sneered at sweet Tales “read by grandmothers” but not their sons. He even leafed through little children’s books But not...
by phillipw | Dec 27, 2019 | AR, PA, RI, VE
Sex, Drugs, and Roses It seems at least a possibility That spoiled, soiled brats might just have feelings, too. They’d have the usual ones, hostility And sulking, and that adolescent brew Of self-regard, fragility, and rage. But maybe Rimbaud had...
by phillipw | Dec 26, 2019 | PO, RI, VE
A Broader Canvas The house guest, Rimbaud, full of polite tact As usual, demanded that a pic Of some poor long-dead person, who now lacked The decency to avoid having sick- Looking mold on her forehead, be removed. If he had only known his lover’s mere,...
by phillipw | Dec 24, 2019 | RI, VE
Exile According to Graham Robb’s biography of Rimbaud, .he & Verlaine visited Hyde Park Corner as tourists ………….during their first period in London. ………......
by phillipw | Dec 22, 2019 | RI, VE
Therapy What herbal dram can doctors give for love? L’amour refuses treatment, runs its course. If you trip this marathon runner, shove, Impose a faltering stumble, she will force Her staggering legs to jolt along. If you Slash love’s wrists...
by phillipw | Dec 19, 2019 | GA, Ho, LO, RI, VE
Letter to his Wife They suffered from a passion like their loins Ripped open, full of pain, and gushing life Out like the plastic chips, the bastard coins (More costly than the infant Paul or wife) From this combined Las Vegas slot-machine Affair. The older...
by phillipw | Dec 17, 2019 | RI
10, rue de Buci The naked Rimbaud liked to show his prick To chambermaids across the rue. He peeled His clothes off and bestrode the roof, his thick Hair being his complete attire, a field Above is scalp, a thick patch down below. An outfit “mythological” is...
by phillipw | Dec 16, 2019 | AR, RI
The Thorn of Thought “It is the thorn of thought,” young Rimbaud said To Izambard—other underlings, too. The prodigy was bleeding from his head, But not just blood. Black tercets flowed, a brew Intoxicating and enough to float A drunken boat, and verses full...
by phillipw | Dec 16, 2019 | RI, VE
A Very Bulldog Welcome The day Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine arrived Together, London was in lovely light. At least it should have been. The sun, deprived Of autumn glory, cringed from urban blight. The coal-fire chimneys’ vileness forced Verlaine To write,...
by phillipw | Dec 15, 2019 | AR, BA, DE, RI
The Months of Love On May 24, 1870, Rimbaud wrote a letter from Charleville to Théodore de Banville, leader of a group of poets in Paris. Maybe each intense blueness is eternal, even if only for the season of love. “Dear Master, We are in the months of love And...
by phillipw | Dec 15, 2019 | BY, RI
Byron and the Boyfriend He Never Got to Meet A man’s poetic quality depends On his capacity for love, or so Said Rimbaud. More like lust. His lovers, friends And innocent bystanders saw the glow Of his to devotion to his verse. His heart? . . . No...
by phillipw | Dec 15, 2019 | CH, RI, ST
Charles Randall Taulelle II “moons pursuing one another” ~ Arthur Rimbaud The moon comes close. The moon comes close to us And we go crazy. We are moons as well. We suffer from past scarring and fresh pus Loads, giving us our wounded look. We swell...
by phillipw | Dec 15, 2019 | RI
Rudeness and Lice ………… Le jeune Rimbaud knew no words for thanks. “Where would the boy have learned them from, how could He have embraced them?” his teacher asked. Blanks Like this appeared in what he understood, This poet, as a...
by phillipw | Dec 15, 2019 | RI
The Eyes Have It “The man was tall, well-built, almost athletically with the perfect oval face of an angel in exile, with untidy light brown hair and eyes of disturbing pale blue” — Paul Verlaine His irises were doubly blue, dark blue And azure circled. Or...
by phillipw | Dec 14, 2019 | KE, RI, VE
Keats, Rimbaud, Verlaine Day after day I sit and write French verse Forms, villanelles and terzanelles. At noon I leave the British Library. “Much worse Existences,” I say, smugly, “are strewn Across the urban universe.” Today I noticed from the bus Paul...
by phillipw | Nov 17, 2019 | RI, VE
The Price of Poetry French Wikipedia “It’s Verlaine just arrived from Brussels…. He is handsome in his own way, and, despite being severely short of clothes, gives no sign of being overwhelmed by...