I Saw Boys Playing Cricket . . .

Truer than True

                Truer than True Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem  Those things inside our throats are waiting for Their meaning.  Music sung begins as notes Which once inside the mouth might want to soar...

Out of the Many, One Creed

Out of the Many, One Creed  Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem  A thousand hilltops And neon’s autumnal leaves, One transparent brook.                                   ~ Shiki (Englished by Phillip Whidden)...

Buirdly

                       Buirdly Pitlochry was the nexus of the soul, Religions’ soul, when Stephenson was young. He might have been a Hindu in his role Of savant.  There he spoke with seer’s tongue Upon the village street.  He saw a man Mistreating his puir dog and...

The Poetry of the Triune God

The Poetry of the Triune God: a Cord of Three Strands   Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem             “from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” tttttt Eternal gyres together one times three. The...

Ultraviolet Poetry

     Ultraviolet Poetry   True poetry tries not to be a phrase Or meaning, but a color God forgot To make, a tint of blue perhaps, a phase   https://images.app.goo.gl/wA9L2aQmRaqN9KgU9   Of orange, that purple punctured Jesus sought When vinegar in sponge was forced...

Grotesqueries

        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...

I Saw Boys Playing Cricket . . .

     I Saw Boys Playing Cricket . . . . . . in white upon a cricket ground today In Oxfordshire as if long centuries passed And made no difference.  There I saw the sway Of bat.  Tradition in a woollen cast, A cast, though supple as the hips and thighs Contained in...

Untroubled Gaultier Green

            Untroubled Gaultier Green The May-time trees put on their costumes, green, Green, green,  and greenish yellow, style.  A few Are copper beech in color.  All have sheen Of silk and satin, every one.  Their coup D’etat is total like a Paris show Composed by...

Gleaned from the Darkly Glowing Web

 Gleaned from the Darkly Glowing Web Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem The rightwing ravings from a friend of long Ago are like the readings in a mind Inside an ancient prophet with a strong Dementia...

Truer than Truth

               Truer than Truthem Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Great is Beauty’s grace,                                    Truth is yet as fair as she. ~ Thomas Campion High duty comes in...

Simple

Simple ’Tis the gift to be simple ~ Shaker song The sea seems simple in our sight today. The waves, if varied, do not vary much. They come and go.  They come and go.  The way The sun comes up is ordinary, such As many days before.  Of course it finds The mountain...

Him for Us . . .

                           Him For Us . . . The rooms in School House echoed with the sound Of words he spoke, his steps along the hall, His laughter, even shouts.  The outside ground, In, say, the Close, though large, was far too small For such a mind and soul.  You...

Christian Love and MAGA

       Christian Love and MAGA* These Christians, when they see that church denies Their politics, decide to leave their faith Behind.  Their savior in this instance lies To win them, and their Christ becomes a wraith. He changes to a ghost of mercy, love, And Good...

What Poetry Should Be and Never Be

What Poetry Should Be and Never Be Too many people think that poetry Should be like this one photo of a dusk. They think that poetry should only be Pink, lavender, and fuzzy clouds.  No musk Of malenesss, armpit smell, and not, not, not A waft of crotch sweat from a...

Supreme Longshot(s)

     Supreme L-o-n-g-s-h-o-t-(s) The Father reigns supreme in every way. It’s all a bit uncertain if the Son Came later and is lesser (this sounds gay) But still divine.  And then the other One Is even more ambiguous.  We know This biblically,...

Does a Daydream in the Mind of God Become Reality?

Does a Daydream in the Mind of God Become Reality? Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem When Jesus has a daydream on his throne, The Holy Spirit and the Father share It since the Trinity has always known...

Pitifully Bulging with Restraint

     Pitifully Bulging with Restraint The ancient myths refrain from giving hot Exactness to sex swollen loves.  The gate Of Troy is breached, but Homer leaves out taut Male flesh in ram and slam of lust in spate Between Queen Helen’s legs.  When Zeus rapes up Inside...

Iseut of the White Hands Slick

         Iseut of the White Hands Slick She moves her white hands down to find his dark Disgustingness, exactly what her need Is in this darker moment.  Long, and stark, And thick it promises disgusting seed If she is brave and desperate enough To take it everywhere...

It Takes One

               It Takes One Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Henry David Thoreau writes of Chaucer, “We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine.  It was such feminineness,...

English Trees in Innocence

 English Trees in Innocence For Charles Randall Stanfield The broad-limbed trees of perished English years And centuries are witnesses to realms Long gone.  A duke or princess disappears While tallest peerages, the oaks and elms, Continue in their reign.  They spread...

The Sonnet in Its Little Room

The Sonnet in Its Little Room The sonnet, much too like a tight cocoon, Encased inside its silk-like threads is far Too tiny and too strict but not immune To mystic grandeur.  It is not a czar Upon a dais seat raised up and vast Of gold, but more a derringer...

Heartwood Needing Treatment

Heartwood Needing Treatment Love feeding on itself will waste away No matter how enamored.  If it sucks Its Valentine-ish marrow, sickly gray Disease will follow.  Suffering deluxe Is suffering nonetheless.  If he or she Does not return the hungry love, the gloom Is...

Sexual Torture

                Sexual Torture The phrase in Japanese “comes smelling out” Becomes just “wafted.”  What a letdown such Attempts result in, only a Girl Scout Translation.  Poetry deploys a crutch When being forced across from foreign tongue To foreign tongue.  When...

Concealment or Revelation

 Concealment or Revelation Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem If minds could play the instruments of mist, Sopranos sing the songs of unheard souls, And treble boys in choirs sing amethyst Magnificats,...

Día de los Muertos and Egyptian Pyramids

    Día de los Muertos and Egyptian Pyramids Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons The lotuses in...

Insights

                    Insights The pint-sized Jamie held his arms out wide To show how big the peony had spread Those petals.  “Big like this!” he smiled.  He tried Hyperbole the first time.  He had shed Mere factuality for larger truth. Young Yank, he aimed for...

Vicars of Esthetics

          Vicars of Esthetics Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Triangular like God the flowers are shown Against a boring green of lawn.  Arrayed In righteous revelation now full blown Their holiness of...

Trees

                       Trees For Charles Randall Stanfield They do much more than just be god-like, trees, Make fruit and limb spans, just be makers of The blossoms, bark, and roots. The leaf that frees The  oxygen to air is far above These gifts.  The trees refuse to...

Who Can Know?

               Who Can Know? Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem It seems that God (or gods) goes moving through The dawn invaded by exhaustion in The night.  The hormone tentacles construe The twilight...

The Innocence of Snow

      The Innocence of Snow Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Wherever snow is, it is always just Like snow in other places.  Snow in Rome And Paris lies just like the holy dust Of manna in the desert,...

Karen

               Karen Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem She had a laugh composed of dusky fat. It seemed to earn its way through twilight sound. The laugh was like a husky playful brat Controlling sex...

Declines and Declining

   Declines and Declining Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem The wood that makes the icons’ boxes lacks The holiness that throbs, still, through these saints And sacred ones.  Despite the inner cracks...

The X4 Route to Bracknell

The X4 Route to Bracknell The cityscapes we wander through at night Are foreign from the sights we see in days, More alien.  We pass a neon site That we have never noticed in the maze Of roads that aren’t a maze in morning hours. Streets loom as Hallowe’en-like in the...

To the Right

              To the Right The sign instructed, “to the right.”  It said, “Go right.”  The right had sapphire eyes and wrote With clarity for fate.  A blond male head Conceived the sign.  Pale whiskered meanings bloat Beneath the notice for the damned.  They walk...

Mystics of Concord

            Mystics of Concord Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem New England thinkers mixed autumnal views With leaves from Homer, also Dante’s leaves. That blinded poet managed to suffuse The thoughts...

Would-be Dictator, a Reptile-like Surinam Toad

Would-be Dictator, a Reptile-like Surinam Toad The President begins to sip his tea. He holds the cup, not daintily. His firm Two fingers grip the handle. His decree Has just been tweeted. Those who start to squirm Are not considered. Gazing out beyond The roses in the...

Closer and Closer

              Closer and Closer Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Am I the vine and you the fence? I feel Perhaps it is the other way around: You vine—and I the mesh.  What would appeal Most, though,...

Na + Cl

                   Na + Cl A purity, a silver white, desires To bond with yellow-greenish chlorine; salt Appears in crystals.  Far away from fires, The point of this affair adorns a vault In darkness in a cavern.  Blackness blanks It out.  A wish becomes a zeal that...

Taironan Troy

                        Taironan Troy    See  “Mucho más que libros,” Semana, 4 June 2001, Bogatá “At the time of the conquest, the Tairona had different cultural practices than Modern Native American populations.  Ethnographic sources highlight freedom to...

Knowing Men

         Knowing Men Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. ~ Ezekiel 16:49 Both Sodom and Gomorrah, salt-lick...

It’s All We Have

         It’s All We Have The landscape that we know touchingly we Refer to as the present.  It is what We map and that is all.  We cannot see The facts of other times or see the strut Of future or of past.  “The noo,” as Scots Pronounce it, is our limit.  We pretend...

Orpheus and Male Reincarnation

Orpheus and Male Reincarnation When Orpheus decided that he craved Escape from women utterly and so Desired migration of his spirit saved From birth to any of them and to go Instead into the beauty of a cob, The poet did not try to fly away To some escape from further...

Upon the Face of Agamemnon

Upon the Face of Agamemnon “and also he [King Priam of Troy] admires Agamemnon for his beauty” ~ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 906 Forget that Helen for a moment.  Think Of gorgeous men.  The King of Troy could not Resist men’s beauty.  Helen caused a stink That...

Two Men in Love in Death

              Two Men in Love in Death Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “Hector dies, and when at last in Book XXIV his corpse is recovered, it is laid out and Andromache holds Hector’s head in her lap,...

The Poetic Kind of True

     The Poetic Kind of True Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “The stories begin in kinds of truth.  As events recede in time, they grow not smaller but larger in language.  The ancestor who fought...

The Creed

           The Creed   Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “One mustn’t accuse Virgil or Ovid of originality, of wilfully making fictions of such importance.  By the time of the Roman poets, everything was...

Where?   Where?  Where?

Where?   Where?  Where? “Achieved poetry paints with at least one colour which can be found nowhere else.” ~  Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 19 Do you know just what that color is?  Gods’ Eyes must contain it—goddesses’ more so— Yet can we see it there?  Perhaps it...

Plato and Powerful Enigmas

Plato and Powerful Enigmas Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem When best, it hums ambiguous like tunes From dead archangels, or like rubbed out lines On palimpsests, or like the muffled runes From mouths...

Plato’s Ideal

          Plato’s Ideal For Denise/Josh and Rachel/Robert Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem [Uranus, the god of the heavens, is both father and mother to the goddess Aphrodite in Plato’s Symposium.] The...

France, the Ancient Place of Love

France, the Ancient Place of Love “In the mid-fifth century [B.C.], however, a Greek at the Cap d’Antibes inscribed two verses on a black stone shaped like a penis:  ‘I am Mister Pleaser, the servant of the holy Goddess Aphrodite.’” ~ Robin Lane Fox, The Classical...

Formal Poetry against Free Verse

Formal Poetry against Free Verse Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Plato in “inventing some extraordinarily powerful images of his own” came up with “notably the poet as Corybant”.  ~ Penelope...

Ars Poetica

             Ars Poetica Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse “The word ‘classic’ itself . . . derives from the Latin word classicus which referred to recruits of the ‘first class’, the heavy infantry in the Roman army.  The...

Comedy or Tragedy:  Someone Should Have Told Shakespeare

Comedy or Tragedy:  Someone Should Have Told Shakespeare Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse When comedy was talked about, the thought Of Plato and his mates was that the laugh Was different from the groan.  A playwright ought To write...

Costumed Judgment

      Costumed Judgment Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse The royalty and myths and heroes of Those eras far removed in masked up time Produced the primal tragedies.  The love In them, the hate, and motives for each crime Are seen...

Defeat in Battle

        Defeat in Battle ………. True beauty is allowed to lapse to make Some room for what is novel, just the new, As if by definition modish ache Is better than the perfect pain.  This skew Along to holiness of fashion runs The flopping risk of...

Invisible Ivory Music

    Invisible Ivory Music   Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. ~ John Keats Herus Pamphilius claimed that Orpheus’s drifting soul, destined to be incarnated anew in some other physical form after he had died, elected to be born a swan so that he...

Ars Sonnetica

                Ars Sonnetica Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem...

Once was Evil Enough

  Once was Evil Enough The ancient tragedies of Athens played Upon that stage just once and then were rolled Around themselves in paper. They had made Impressions strong enough and so were scrolled Up, waiting … silently … for who knows what? For paper...

Inhalers

             Inhalers Created for Chuck one day before the anniversary of his birth. “When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the...

The Truth Exposed

     The Truth Exposed Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “…in Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, §178; after he has described the garments of the angels, some of which glow with flame, some of which...

RachelROBERT

               RachelROBERT The ancient myths about strange beasts composed Of body parts from different creatures fill Some need inside the psyche.  Boys enclosed Inside a female body ache until They realize the truth about their sex. The suffering starts as if it’s...

Ars Poetica

          Ars Poetica “The word ‘classic’ itself . . . derives from the Latin word classicus which referred to recruits of the ‘first class’, the heavy infantry in the Roman army. The ‘classical’, then, is ‘first class’, though it is no longer heavily armoured.” ~...

There’s Perfection Three Times Perfection

There’s Perfection Three Times Perfection “All other loves are lost in only thine” ~ Alexander Pope translating Ovid writing in the voice of Sappho An ocean is a puny thing compared To outer space, more like a quark to strengths Of galaxies.  Just as the Big Bang...

It was (you may say) satisfactory

It was (you may say) satisfactory Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem When once there was a war above, not all Was wrong. The heft of heaven is the strength Of its stability. The walls, though tall, Are...

What Really Matters

  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...

Beowulf as Instruction for Living

Beowulf as Instruction for Living Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem If only life, our stuttered lives, were like Sestinas or like Anglo Saxon lines Of poetry, each unseen ghostly spike Of caesuras that...

Blind, not Blind

          Blind, not Blind http://ytellioglu.tumblr.com/post/86727114823/world-view-according-to-homer-prior-to-900-bc The poet didn’t matter as a man With quirks and motives of his own. He spoke From guts of culture, from the bones of clan. He spoke in patterns of...

Ancient Greek Knowledge

     Ancient Greek Knowledge “Men must learn by suffering. Drop by drop in sleep upon the heart Falls the laborious memory of pain. Against one’s will comes wisdom.” …..~  Chorus in AGAMEMNON, Aeschylus translated by Louis MacNeice The classic Greeks knew death...

Oral Poems from the Past

   Oral Poems from the Past Conservative as brocade velvet, verse, The older forms, embraces in its folds The ancient tongues, the peoples’ tongues.  They’re terse In ballades.  Such rigidity upholds The thinking of the folk as if a starch Were added to the richness...

Storm in the Friday Night Love Feast

Storm in the Friday Night Love Feast Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem He raised his blue-veined wrists in notes to God The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The last Force was to come, bolts to the...

Only Paradox is Universally True

Only Paradox is Universally True The cosmos touches me and I know love And also it is more the other way Around.  The highest heaven far above And God’s foundations join as one.  A May Of charity expresses one long truth That matters.  When that spring explodes inside...

What is Poetry?

What is Poetry? Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “something irreducible in poetry” ~ Michael Schmidt, The Story of Poetry, 11 Some love a certain murkiness in lines, With paradox and oxymoron prized....

Great Again

          Great Again Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem So this is how I felt when Tronald Dump https://bwpa-images.s3.amazonaws.com/winners/NETY2xYJPwimmYsXn.jpg Won stupid votes in Rust Dump zones,...

The Unbound Book

      Unbound the Book Some somewhere not within the view of eyes A book lies open.  It is perfect, full, So full that it can always bat off lies If it is read completely.  It will pull The soul.  Perfection means that it is free Of boundaries.  We may write, and...

“Work of the Father of Glory”

“Work of the Father of Glory” ………. — “weork Wuldor-Faeder” ……………~ Cædmon, “Cædmon’s Hymn” Ideals, those wonders that are perfect, come From only one perfection.  Like begets Its like, its offspring, that proceeding from...

Buddhas Better than Methuselah

Buddhas Better than Methuselah If you become a buddha, would you know It? Would you suddenly break through the world To calm sublimity, escape the flow Of suffering and time that long has swirled Around your body and your soul and in Them? If you made this leap, would...

Himmortality

Himmortality “In 1999, the futurist Ray Kurzwell published a book entitled The Age of Spiritual Machines. He looked forward to a future in which the ‘human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems . . . and...

Enough Trouble Caused

Enough Trouble Caused When we began to put the gods in myth And the language of the poets, transcendence Died. This literature became the smith That pounded, flat, godly ascendance To make them jewellery foil for our minds. They used to be so coolly far above Us that...

Bow Down Thine Ear

                                          Bow Down Thine Ear Gods used to be transcendent, far beyond, Above, away, unreachable on cliffs Too high to scale. We, humans, were so fond That we imagined Gods behind white whiffs Of mists in sacred precincts set aside By...

He Might As Well Have Written Obscure Poetry

He Might As Well Have Written Obscure Poetry So Socrates believes not just that Soul exists But is bipartite and tripartite, both. He postulates a mixed up nature. He twists And turns, an ancient Greek as mental sloth, Since this is contradictory at worst And badly...

TORToise President

   TORToise President He bestrides the world like a colossal tortoise When everything he touches turns to mould, You know there’s something very, very wrong. His gold-like wife has sold herself for gold, Though, yes, we could have known it all along— That she’s not...

Trump Disregard

          Trump Disregard That man who dominates the TV screen Can dominate the world.  Cool Hollywood Stars manage much less power.  They’re far less seen Than TV guys or even Bollywood Stars.  Real reality is not as strong As highly rated reality shows. Charisma in...

Colors Truer than Truth

 Colors Truer than Truth Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Not veiled and partly veiled, completely veiled, The peonies are like a perfect prayer, Perhaps one to the Trinity.  Exhaled In reverence the...

God, the Father, is Different from his Son and the Holy Ghost

    God, the Father, is Different from his Son and the Holy Ghost   Two peonies, a couple, side by side, One larger, lighter (that’s except its heart), The other made of heartbreak in its wide And darker oval, beauty like a dart To harm us, both are perfect in their...

The Lady’s Not for Earning, No, Of Course Not, No

The Lady’s Not for Earning, No, Of Course Not, No “Words, after all,” he said, “are only words And I have heard so many in these days That half my wits are sick.” ~ Lancelot, in Lancelot, by Edwin Arlington Robinson, p. 164 If “Words . . . are only words,”...

Trump as Stupid Indignant Funny Donald Fuck

Trump as Stupid Indignant Funny Donald Fuck I’m glad that we’ve elected Donald Trump Apprentice president.  We tune in, watch His many failures, sneering at the chump. Now almost every day he makes a splotch On decency.  A rump of voters hired The clown and now no...

Build the Wall!

          Build the Wall! Let’s build a wall, mañana, keep the Yanks From coming in, keep avocadoes here And starve whites of their guacamole, “Thanks So Much” and “Muchas Gracias.”  They should fear Us.  After all their fruit crops won’t get picked, Their gardens...

Crazy Apprentice President

Crazy Apprentice President Suppose he isn’t stupid as a bat Or yellow brick road that bends to a fraud, But still he’s acting like a spoiled brat Who thinks he’s worthy of respect like God. Aggrieved  about how he perceives the press Is treating him, he can’t be...

The Trees of Knowledge of Evil and Evil

    The Trees of Knowledge of Evil and Evil By USDA photo by Scott Bauer – United States Department of Agriculture, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44873...

Onward, Forward, Shout Aloud Hosanna

Onward, Forward, Shout Aloud Hosanna Forget the Holy of the Holies now. Think “Nastiness of Nasties” at the top. He’s picked the vilest ones to be the prow Of Good Yacht Nastiness, to be the crop Of all the rottenest of fruit to serve Us.  Being vile and vile he has...