May 27, 2015 | Grief, Gus Stevens, Mom, Songs for the Dead, Sonnet, Terza Rima
If you believe that deaths do come in threes and that we are maskers in some Greek play then I am deathless, immortal to disease. No foe’s hand can spill my blood nor make me pay the infinite cost of my one own life; it must be by my hand: no other way. Mother...
Mar 8, 2015 | Grief, Gus Stevens, Mom, Quatrains, Songs for the Dead
How ill a son returns his mother’s love. A mother’s love is spendthrift, wasteful, strange– while his response, at best, is but an echo of that heart. —It will never be a fair exchange. Share...
Oct 2, 2012 | Gus Stevens, Mom, Quatrains, Songs for the Dead
Blankets hide the holes punched through hollow doors and she covers the shelves with plastic dragonflies or ceramic angels bought cheap at dollar stores. Everyday some lone unguarded trinket dies, the victim of a clumsy hand or wagging tail. The epileptic dog will be...
Sep 23, 2012 | Aging, Gus Stevens, Songs for the Dead, Villanelle
He turns five today; all is future, nothing past. All his days are yet to flower, yet to come. Wherever he goes, he runs—those shoes will not last. He grows and his slumber is not, as yet, harassed by twilight’s pestering flies, those furies born from...
Jan 16, 2012 | Grief, Gus Stevens, Quatrains, Songs for the Dead
Goodnight my friend. Goodnight sweet Carines. When I heard, I did not want to believe; if it were true, the earth would be made less, made ugly, cruel; a pain without reprieve. But the mourning world wages quiet war; against death, our ever-enemy, we crusade as the...