Poetry - Moss Kingdom

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.

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter Solstice

by M. Gus | December 21, 2015 | Advent, Chiastic, Gus Stevens, Seasons, Winter | 0 Comments

Long lay the world in sin and error pining Till he appeared and the soul felt it's worth. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoicing For yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn. -John Sullivan Dwight All the nations grope about in the dark to find some...

Come Thou Dayspring

by M. Gus | November 19, 2017 | Autumn, Multi-Syllabic Rhyme, Pentameter, Seasons | 0 Comments

Where is warmth and where can the light be found? These days, the workers put in longer hours than the sun who goes too soon to sleep. All the leaves, once bright, now have dulled and browned with the sunken gourds and withered flowers to feed the molds and mushrooms...

The View From Winter

by M. Gus | February 13, 2011 | Gus Stevens, Regret, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet, Winter | 0 Comments

By some unjust miracle I awoke again today. How? When the wasted days and hours accumulate like a grey cloak of soot-heavy snow; the sweet-sick malaise sticks and smothers me. Regret, my old friend, tucks me to sleep under these covers, while, minute-by-minute, the...

A Seduction: in Four Seasons

by M. Gus | July 15, 2016 | Alexandrine, Autumn, Erotic, Gus Stevens, Love, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Winter | 0 Comments

Look my young fool, born with the Spring's first green, our morning is all spent and now the afternoon bleeds red in the west. Will you really be so mean as to ignore the pot you set upon the coals? I want you, and the water will be boiling soon. Come, Fool, with me...

The Leaves Remember

by M. Gus | July 23, 2018 | Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Pentameter, Rhymed Couplets, Summer | 0 Comments

Why are my poems so obsessed with doom? Is there no light their dark will not consume, no work they will not turn into a chore, nor child they cannot drown in metaphor? Sometimes beauty is neither fraud nor thief; sometimes a leaf is just a common leaf— a welcome...

Liturgical Time by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | December 2, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris, Unrhymed Other, Winter | 0 Comments

Behold in liturgical time Both natural and ecclesial The bowing of the trees The lifting of the hands The giving of the leaves The enacting of nativity The gowning of the ground in white The singing of the old hymns The fasting of the daylight The reciting of ancient...

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket by Leigh Hunt

by M. Gus | June 5, 2016 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, Summer, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too...

Notes from the Quarantine

by M. Gus | March 27, 2020 | Gus Stevens, Humor, Irregular Rhyme, Seasons, Spring | 0 Comments

Day 1 You tell yourself that you are going to learn French. Instead you make coffee with milk and tell yourself it's okay because they've yet to close the grocery stores; no need to break into the shelf-stable supplies. You tell yourself lies—that you'll use the time...

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...

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...

To Autumn by John Keats

by M. Gus | October 14, 2012 | Quatrains, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;...

Sonnet 129 by William Shakespeare

by M. Gus | December 2, 2011 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

Is lust in action; and till action, lust The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, Past reason...

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

by M. Gus | July 4, 2014 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows...

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...

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas

by M. Gus | November 14, 2011 | The Work of Greater Minds, Villanelle | 0 Comments

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.Good...

The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator by Anne Sexton

by M. Gus | December 20, 2011 | Irregular Rhyme, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

The end of the affair is always death. She’s my workshop. Slippery eye, out of the tribe of myself my breath finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Finger to finger, now she’s mine. She’s not too far. She’s my...

Since There is No Escape by Sara Teasdale

by M. Gus | February 12, 2014 | Aging, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Since there is no escape, since at the end My body will be utterly destroyed, This hand I love as I have loved a friend, This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed; Since there is no escape even for me Who love life with a love too sharp to bear: The scent of orchards...

“I wish I could remember that first day” by Christina Rossetti

by M. Gus | August 11, 2014 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

I wish I could remember that first day, First hour, first moment of your meeting me, If bright or dim the season, it might be Summer or Winter for aught I can say; So unrecorded did it slip away,...

God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

by M. Gus | January 18, 2017 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

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...

Paradise Lost by John Milton (Excerpt from book 4)

by M. Gus | March 16, 2012 | The Work of Greater Minds, Unrhymed Other | 0 Comments

Satan's speech upon finding earth and viewing the sun for the first time: O thou that with surpassing Glory crowned, Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the GodOf this new World; at whose sight all the StarsHide their diminished heads; to thee I call, But with no...

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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