by phillipw | Jul 22, 2022 | LO, VE
The Goddess of Love Stands Distinct from Ecstasy The temple is love’s stone sonata made Of marble and of space. Its pillars rise In fluting. They are made of light and shade Or more like melodies which goddess eyes Can hear. Between the columns shadows fail...
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 | Apr 24, 2022 | BE, HA, Ho, RE, TR, VE
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...
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 | Jun 1, 2021 | CI, CO, HE, TH, VE
“Resistance to Government,” the Tract that Wrested India from Britain and Led Martin Luther King, Jr., to the Lincoln Memorial Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Maine A natural Sabbath brings a...
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 | Dec 27, 2020 | KA, LI, NA, RE, VE
Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima The past is nuclear, exploding in A present moment boring as a brown Field waiting for some turnip seeds. The skin Of now is guiltless, threatless till the frown Of yesterday’s wide sins rips up the fleece. The grimace is electric in...
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 | Jul 28, 2020 | AT, DE, HE, MO, PE, PO, VE
Their Painted Desert Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem They wait. They wait beneath. They wait below Us, we who live. Some wait in mud like Peat Men sacrificed for long lost reasons. Woe Is far...
by phillipw | Jul 20, 2020 | ES, GI, MA, MI, PL, SO, VE
Watered Down Wine and Esthetics “Gretchen Reydams-Shils (“Myth and Poetry in the Timaeus“) deals with Socrates’ puzzling remark that his description of an ideal state was like a painting.” ~ http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/plato-and-the-poets/ Socrates’...
by phillipw | Jul 19, 2020 | AC, AP, LO, TH, VE
The Sacred Fire Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The Thespians of Greece in ancient times Upheld the god of love, devout as saints Have ever been. Deep lovers’ paradigms Are never quite as true...
by phillipw | Jul 10, 2020 | AP, BI, LO, TR, UR, VE
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...
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, 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 20, 2020 | CY, PO, VE
Super Binomial Byronic Poets We used to worry that computers might Take over poetry, that they might thrill Us with Romantic zings beyond the height Of human seers, that motherboards might spill Out glorious epics and the like. But now We have another worry. Cyborgs...
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 19, 2020 | LO, VE
The Transit of Venus with a monarch’s voice Cry, “Havoc!” When Venus transits hairy torsos, she Impels much more than sweat in manly hearts. This goddess is a Viking on a spree Of killing, gone berserk. Her orbit charts A...
by phillipw | May 16, 2020 | AU, CO, VE
Comet 46P/Wirtanen to Be Viewed from Venezia, Serenissima Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem A glowing circle smudge of aqua light Sails through the constellation Taurus with An icy pinprick at its heart....
by phillipw | May 9, 2020 | AD, AN, AP, AR, HE, IN, MA, MY, SE, VE, VU
Primitive Sophisticated Truth Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem ….…… When Greeks believed that nature’s aspects moved As gods and goddesses, as wind and fire, Then Bóreas came...
by phillipw | May 6, 2020 | LO, VE
Sententious Symbiosis “The Roman historian Tacitus records an early Germanic gnome: ‘Women must weep and men remember.’” Michael Schmidt, The Story of Poetry, 5 Sometimes a war is small and very large At once. A woman and a man are two But forced together they produce...
by phillipw | May 2, 2020 | AU, NE, VE
Vermont Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem A white wood house defines the slope. The trees Have gone to red and flame. A field beyond Is spread with grass and granite rocks at...
by phillipw | Apr 26, 2020 | LE, MU, VE
Donna Leon I’m tired of Donna, not of Venice, though. Brunetti is still likeable enough And Paola’s improved a bit. The slow Starts to the crime plots make it tough For readers used to fiction of this kind, Detective novels. Some might think,...
by phillipw | Mar 31, 2020 | PE, TR, VE
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...
by phillipw | Mar 10, 2020 | VE, WO
Wokingham and Venice (Petrarchan and English sonnets) In Wokingham where charming little red Brick houses decorated with cream stone Maintain the quintessential, modest tone Of English towns, a quiet A to Zed Of quaintest understatement, I just found A book about...
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, 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 23, 2020 | VE
Serenissima as Glass-like Glory A vision made of stone and windows, waves, Reflections from their surfaces that touch The walls and panes, a patterning which saves The buildings from becoming just a clutch Of chaos, turning them to reverie And daydream,...
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 | 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, 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 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 | BA, BI, VE
Verlaine on la Poésie “a composer is someone who desires, as a male desires” ~ Jean Barraqué A poet is a man who knows desire, Desire as love, affection, and as lust, Devotion as a spirit’s candle fire, Aflame as silently as men who must Refrain from...
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 23, 2020 | JU, MA, ME, SA, VE
Rock and Gas Giants Five planets rise to shine in white and red Above. The springtime sky becomes divine. They all are gods, though one of them is dead, Slaughtered by his son. Night-sky gods align Themselves with nothing. Is this an omen? Astrologers...
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 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, 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 | 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 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, 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 | Jan 8, 2020 | VE
A Filthy Flow An image of St. Mark’s reflected in The waves of aqua alta warps the strength Of loveliness. Distortions caused by sin Are called to mind. Iniquities at length Are brought to judgment. Past Venetians stole That body from a church down by...
by phillipw | Jan 8, 2020 | VE
Old Palazzi are Resurrected Old palaces are resurrected from Within, although, perhaps, their faces are Allowed to keep their wrinkled look, like scar Of age, or sin, and that of Christendom. The looted goods among the marble walls, Mosaic glitter made from greed are...
by phillipw | Jan 8, 2020 | Uncategorized, VE
La serenissima A city is presided over by The moon in half its glory, and the scars And blemishes revealed beneath bright Mars Along the Grand Canal are quite as high In number as the craters up above— Serene half disc, the surfaces below, A twinning of...
by phillipw | Jan 8, 2020 | VE
Flying to Venice The vision of far Venice rises high Inside the mind, as Alps rise high with snow, Rock, clouds, and glacier whiteness spread below. The heart has opened up its mystic eye. It pierces through the distance and the mist Prophetically, more...
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 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 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 | Dec 13, 2019 | VE
Vesuvian Vengeance Even vengeance has a startling beauty To ancients and their atavistic heirs Around the Middle Sea who love duty To family honor. They connive their snares Into murder and conceive they are Achieving glistening sweetness in the blood. Their lips...
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...
by phillipw | Nov 17, 2019 | RI, VE
Not Nearly Twenty Thousand Leagues across the Sea Two poets took a science-fiction trip Together, leaving sonnet Europe for Modernity in London. Comic strip Futurity of hardness spread before Them: coal fed dragons belched out smoke and fire On rigid iron tracks...
by phillipw | Oct 30, 2019 | RI, VE
Rimbaud, the Seer, Speaks Somewhere among the beds and sheets of dreams Untroubled sexes sleep. They do not yearn For likeness only, nor for love that seems To need its opposite to make it burn. These drowsy flares are burning in slow, Unspoken prophecies the...
by phillipw | Oct 30, 2019 | 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 an orange...
by phillipw | Oct 17, 2019 | RI, VE
Three Septembers September 1871, September 1872 Septembers are the fateful months for falls. Septembers, not quite autumn yet, will start The way. They do not mean to hear the calls Of destiny, but there it is. They part The summer from its certain leaves and oaths...
by phillipw | Oct 17, 2019 | P, VE
Lucien Viotti, Arthur Rimbaud, and Lucien Létinois ‘armes lentes’ ~ Paul Verlaine Paul always was a child prodigy when It came to slow, slow tearfulness about Those ones he loved, especially young men. Paul specialized in slowed rubato pout When...