Poetry - Moss Kingdom

At Torrey Pines

by M. Gus | April 17, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Quatrains | 0 Comments

A cruel salt wind molests the twisted pine who grovels on his gnarled knees for rain; his futile prayers won't mend his broken spine nor will he stand, as in his dreams, again. The cliffs themselves all crumble in the sea and the tumble-down rocks resent the mocking...

Tooth by Rotten Tooth

by M. Gus | February 4, 2019 | Aging, Dream, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Multi-Syllabic Rhyme, Sestet | 0 Comments

Legs stirring before the alarm's tormenting beep, I wake from strange dreams in the autumn of my youth, and choke on broken promises I meant to keep-- a sludge that settles to the bottom with the truth where bottled thoughts belch the foam of cold fermented sleep and...

Dream After Making 300 Valentines for Lifelong Aids Alliance: by Amy Doran

by M. Gus | June 10, 2014 | Amy (Doran) Keeney, Dream, Unrhymed Other | 0 Comments

We sat, pasting crows from construction paper waiting for them to come to life. They did come to life, shuddering with breath, flapping cautiously, realizing. Jesus could be a camera watching over us when we're sick with letters sick with names, lying on a hospital...

The Icebox

by M. Gus | June 5, 2018 | Alexandrine, Daughter, Dream, Grief, Gus Stevens, Hexameter | 0 Comments

In my dream, I held too many things in my hands and my fingers grappled and fumbled with the load afraid I'd drop one as I stumbled down the road for I'd balanced several things atop an icebox and my dream-drunk brain was slow, weighted down with sand until I knelt to...

A Child’s Sleep

by M. Gus | July 18, 2018 | Alexandrine, Daughter, Dream, Gus Stevens | 0 Comments

I wonder if the tearful child, not yet perceiving what it means to fall asleep, might believe she dies each night. Afraid to go alone, she chokes on her goodbyes, "Please don't forget me! O please leave the door ajar!" But the swallowing Unknown will not share her...

All This Juice and All This Joy

by M. Gus | May 8, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Seasons, Summer | 0 Comments

Alive and heavy with health, syrup swells the root, and sun-dappled fields are filled with walking flowers: the blossoms of the body and the promise of fruit. We know, and delight, and dream away the hours; let us have sweet Summer's cream ...

Sunday Morning Lethargy

by M. Gus | September 8, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 1, Terza Rima | 0 Comments

It's Sunday morning; I don't make the bed. Somehow worn from an oversupply of sleep, I feel empty and overfed all at once. Should I eat or should I try a second cup of coffee, or the tea? I am too weary to decide and I tire of this mush of humid luxury. The night held...

Spider Dream: a Limerick

by M. Gus | June 11, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Humor, Limerick | 0 Comments

I saw a spider fall into my bed right onto the pillow beside my head. Now I'm hunting him, like preachers hunt sin, and dare not sleep till he or I is dead.

Ephemera: Beauty Lies

by M. Gus | August 16, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Italian Sonnet, Moss Kingdom, Sonnet | 0 Comments

"It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live." "Beauty is unbearable, drives us...

Not One of Us Tried to Remember by Duncan King

by M. Gus | February 2, 2016 | Duncan King, Grief, Villanelle, Winter | 1 Comment

Not one of us tried to remember what happened in that cave in the middle of tropical December The men burned to not less than ember villagers we'd tried to save not one of us tried to remember The two Portland boys in chain and fetter so long starved they could only...

After Walking in the Rain

by M. Gus | November 21, 2016 | Chiastic, Gus Stevens, Winter | 0 Comments

I need to find a place to dry my shoes and a fresh towel after a hot shower, then clean sheets tucked tight beneath the corners of the bed. I've been too long in the wind, too long among the tree limbs all thinned of leaves and life. While winter's bare mourners rake...

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

by M. Gus | September 22, 2016 | Aging, Italian Sonnet, Love, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Winter | 0 Comments

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For...

Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay

by M. Gus | March 25, 2015 | Spring, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is...

All Sad Thoughts Are Banished: reflections on Roethke’s death at the Bloedel Reserve

by M. Gus | November 21, 2016 | Chiastic, Grief, Gus Stevens, Regret, Winter | 0 Comments

The woman at the counter said she could not tell me where the poet Roethke drowned. The Bloedel Reserve wanted to put on a happier face, a garden in the wood and clifftop eyes above the grey-blue Sound. The pool where they discovered him was gone; the dying place torn...

A Closer Kind of Warm: a break-up-with-summer song

by M. Gus | September 1, 2013 | Autumn, Gus Stevens, Quatrains, Seasons, Summer | 0 Comments

The tyrant sun with unforgiving light bends the boys and girls like the August wheat. He makes them strip their clothes and beg for night like mountains made immodest in the heat. Rustling in a windless night, they seethe and sweat in anguish—should they cut their...

November by William Cullen Bryant

by M. Gus | September 19, 2016 | Autumn, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun! One mellow smile through the soft vapory air, Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds run, Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare. One smile on the brown hills and naked trees, And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths...

Dandelions

by M. Gus | May 11, 2019 | Gus Stevens, Rhymed Couplets, Spring | 0 Comments

They say to write what you know, but what if there is nothing left to show? Nothing to paint but green on green, and all there is to see—already seen. No fresh petals curl up from the dirt, and meaning hangs like an ill-fitting shirt: stretched and shrunken, thin and...

Iron Sky

by M. Gus | October 31, 2016 | Autumn, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Quatrains | 0 Comments

With a howl, October's winds shear the fiery hosts of their yellows and reds to leave the branches bare. Then the orphaned leaves are stained, like little brown ghosts, on the sidewalk before they're raised into the air again. A resurrecting tempest—they fall up and...

Winter Staves by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | December 14, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris, Winter | 0 Comments

Is it winter? The trees are waiting to be clothed Arms and branches lifted up to the heavens Staves - ragged upright wooden bones Sup life with a little soil - frozen Limbs clenched through the wind Some lose weight and watch their friends Keep warm through the winter...

The Cherry Trees by Edward Thomas

by M. Gus | May 18, 2017 | Quatrains, Seasons, Spring, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed. Other poems on Moss Kingdom about Spring: Spring by Edna St. Vincent...

Immortal Sails by Alfred Noyes

by M. Gus | April 20, 2014 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

Now, in a breath, we’ll burst those gates of gold, And ransack heaven before our moment fails. Now, in a breath, before we, too, grow old, We’ll mount and sing and spread immortal sails. It is not time that makes...

Thou Hast Made Me, and Shall Thy Work Decay? by John Donne

by M. Gus | June 6, 2016 | Italian Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste, I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday; I dare not move my dim eyes any way, Despair behind, and death before doth cast Such terror,...

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

by M. Gus | November 29, 2011 | The Work of Greater Minds, Villanelle | 0 Comments

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside...

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

by M. Gus | November 9, 2016 | Advent, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all...

The Pulley by George Herbert

by M. Gus | March 3, 2012 | Quintains, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, “Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can. Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie, Contract into a span.” So strength...

A Poem for Father’s day by John Piper

by M. Gus | June 17, 2012 | Rhymed Couplets, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

No tree however deep the roots, However high and green the shoots, However strong the trunk has stood, Or firm the fibers of the wood, No tree was ever meant to be A never-ending shade for me Or you. Save one: where Jesus died With bleeding branches spread as wide And...

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

by M. Gus | October 13, 2015 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunk-less legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those...

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – by Emily Dickinson

by M. Gus | March 28, 2017 | Grief, Rhymed Couplets, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, go round – A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – Regardless grown, A...

How Sweet and Awful is this Place by Isaac Watts, 1707

by M. Gus | June 26, 2015 | Hymn, Quintains, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

How sweet and awful* is the place With Christ within the doors, While everlasting love displays The choicest of her stores! Here every bowel of our God With soft compassion rolls; Here peace and pardon bought with blood Is food for dying souls. While all our...

Where is the Boy? a Rondel for Stephaun

by M. Gus | March 6, 2016 | Gus Stevens, Rondel, Songs for the Dead | 0 Comments

"Look at the picture. Where is the boy?" "Use your finger, like this, and point right here." Some sounds come out of the scowling man, "We're wasting time. Better to let him enjoy himself, stare at the sun, fondle a toy." "When we talk, it's like he can't even...

Yes, I Was Once Afraid of Bees

by M. Gus | July 14, 2016 | Gus Stevens, Humor, Rondel | 0 Comments

Back when I was afraid of bees with a fear most grave and sober; I would flinch when they'd flyover, would shrink and beg my mother, "Please let me stay inside away from these!" Whining from May to October. Yes, I was once afraid of bees but now I see with eyes more...

You Violated Right-of-way: a rondel about how I hope you die in a fire.

by M. Gus | February 20, 2016 | Gus Stevens, Humor, Rondel | 0 Comments

You violated right-of-way when you cut in front of all of us-- a hundred drivers and a city bus-- to be the first car parked on the freeway. There were a few words I wanted to say but it's Lent and my wife growls when I cuss; you violated right-of-way when you cut in...

Paper Hearts

by M. Gus | Feb 13, 2017 | Gus Stevens, Love, Multi-Syllabic Rhyme, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet

Today's the second month and fourteenth day of yet another year. When paper hearts are cut from folded pink and Love portrayed as a cartoon infant, blind and armed with darts to skewer Spring's first sons. Meanwhile pitchmen ply their wares: the 'forever' diamond ring...

Les Bijoux by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Jacques LeClercq)

by M. Gus | Feb 6, 2017 | Erotic, Love, Quatrains, The Work of Greater Minds

Naked was my dark love, and, knowing my heart, Adorned in but her most sonorous gems, Their high pomp decked her with the conquering art Of Moorish slave girls crowned with diadems. Dancing for me with lively, mocking sound, This world of stone and metal, brittle and...

Thoughts in a Zoo by Countee Cullen

by M. Gus | Feb 4, 2017 | Rhymed Couplets, The Work of Greater Minds

They in their cruel traps, and we in ours, Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours Commiserating each the other’s woe, To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow. Man could but little proffer in exchange Save that his cages have a larger range. That lion with his...

Villanelle of the Temptress by James Joyce

by M. Gus | Feb 4, 2017 | Love, The Work of Greater Minds, Villanelle

Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days. Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze And you have had your will of him. Are you not weary of ardent ways? Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim....

Talons Polished Brass

by M. Gus | Jan 29, 2017 | Gus Stevens, Quatrains, Rubaiyat

Sounds are metamorphed by fear, and trolls grind their teeth with the bones of a butchered hind. Such are the thoughts that will not let you sleep when silence paints the visions of the blind. The bravest have the coward souls of sheep huddled together against the...

Love is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay

by M. Gus | Jan 27, 2017 | Aging, Love, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;...

God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

by M. Gus | Jan 18, 2017 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now...

eBooks now available on Amazon

by M. Gus | Jan 13, 2017 | Products

Moss Kingdom Seasons Songs for the Dead Sinner's Psalms v.1 Sinner's Psalms v. 2 The Unspeakable Name v. 1 The Unspeakable Name v. 2

Sunken Gold by Eugene Lee-Hamilton

by M. Gus | Jan 9, 2017 | Grief, Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds

In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships; And gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell, Lie nestled in the ocean-flower’s bell With love’s old gifts, once kissed by long-drowned lips; And round some wrought gold cup the sea-grass whips, And hides lost pearls,...

Youth Gone by Christina Rossetti

by M. Gus | Dec 31, 2016 | Aging, Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds

Youth gone, and beauty gone if ever there Dwelt beauty in so poor a face as this; Youth gone and beauty, what remains of bliss? I will not bind fresh roses in my hair, To shame a cheek at best but little fair,-- Leave youth his roses, who can bear a thorn,-- I will...

Tiptoe Hope

by M. Gus | Dec 27, 2016 | Advent, Gus Stevens, Italian Sonnet, Mom, Sonnet

A mother's delight and child's torment: all those gifts beneath the glittering tree. On Christmas Eve, a singular present, always the smallest, she'd let us tear free from its bright paper. The rest must remain secrets for one more sleep: still a promise that there is...

Incarnation by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 25, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

Exact imprint Unum Anno Domini Very God very man without blemish Perfect lamb Hypostatic union Homoousios Saint Nicolas A bruise upon the cheek of Arius Hard to believe Our desperate need Paradox Son of God Son of man Climax of covenant and plan Offspring of Eve...

Christmas Eve by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 24, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

There was a time when the world Like an arctic desert wasteland Frozen and forbidding Made no room For hopeful celebration Always winter never Christmas Hollow men filled themselves With a little dried tubers Or whatever they could find Thinking none to thank Praised...

Kings by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 23, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

"And he did what was evil in the sight of the lord" That common epitaph like a pall Hung over the memory of most The kings of Israel and Judah That country of schism with 'covenant, calling and charter' To be a light to the myriad of nations Grasping and feeling their...

Some Kind of Glory by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 22, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

Something about Christmas The thought of divinity entering The world as a babe Condescending to diaper changes Nursing from his mother's breast Unable to hold up his own head Becoming dependent Seems to elevate all of life And it's most mundane experiences To some...

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