Poetry - Moss Kingdom

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

At the Wading Pool

by M. Gus | August 7, 2018 | Alexandrine, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Seasons, Summer | 0 Comments

The wading pool is shrinking with the wasted sun and the yellows of summer drain slowly away exposing red bricks beneath the glittering spray. With cast-off toys and leaves littered about their feet, the bone-soaked nine-year-olds will squeal, crash, and run through...

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...

All This Juice and All This Joy

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

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...

Winter Words: a poem about the uselessness of poems

by M. Gus | December 15, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet, Winter | 0 Comments

What can be offered to the afternoon but words and words; there's nothing new to say and so I'm silent as the winter's moon with her half smile over the brilliant day. The clouds have all been chased off by the sun, her sole companion in an empty sky, and I despoil...

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...

Mother of the Storm

by M. Gus | August 12, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

What is it about the sea, that heaving mass of endless grey, that stills and saddens me and bends my thoughts like clay? Upon the undulating mass the waves warp and glisten like a field of broken glass and call to all who'd listen, "I am the mother of the storm and...

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...

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 Secret Rose by William Butler Yeats

by M. Gus | December 30, 2013 | Rhymed Couplets, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

FAR-OFF, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep Men have named...

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

by M. Gus | November 17, 2011 | The Work of Greater Minds, Villanelle | 0 Comments

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that...

anyone lived in a pretty how town by e.e. cummings

by M. Gus | January 12, 2012 | The Work of Greater Minds, Unrhymed Other | 0 Comments

anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moon stars rain...

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...

“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,...

Hymn to Prosperine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith) by Algernon Charles Swinburne

by M. Gus | December 6, 2015 | Rhymed Couplets, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Evelyn de Morgan, Night and Sleep 1878 Vicisti, Galilæe. I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend. Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that...

From Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by M. Gus | October 28, 2012 | The Work of Greater Minds, Unrhymed Other | 0 Comments

TRUTH, so far, in my book;—the truth which draws Through all things upwards,—that a twofold world Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things And spiritual,—who separates those two In art, in morals, or the social drift Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,...

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

The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson

by M. Gus | November 13, 2011 | The Work of Greater Minds, Villanelle | 0 Comments

Most of you know that I have a certain affection/obsession with sonnets, but I have been tinkering with a new poetic form, called a villanelle, in recent days. Similar to a sonnet, villanelles have a fixed rhyme scheme and predefined structure and length. These...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Chains by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 21, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

When I was a kid I made chains One every year, hung near my bed About five loops from each single sheet Of cheap construction paper- Alternating red and green every morning tear one off Mark the distance between Now and Christmas With a visual point of reference The...

Gifts by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 20, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

My wife and two kids Christmas carols and coffee What isn't a gift? The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris's Advent series on Moss Kingdom: Incarnation, Christmas Eve, Kings, Some Kind of Glory, Chains, Gifts, Quotidian Couple, A Thousand Lights, Eve &...

Quotidian Couple by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 19, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

Mary- first century Palestine Most common of female names Young virgin betrothed to Joseph a carpenter -most common of trades An ancient quotidian couple Merely out to make their way Joseph's hands calloused with labor Mary thinks of her wedding day Their story one...

A Thousand Lights by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 18, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

With the glow of a thousand lights Brightening my daughter's eyes Cold air and a winter jacket She learns to keep her hands warm buried deep within her pockets And so she buys time To walk and watch and wander It's her third Christmas And she is taking it all in...

Eve & Mary by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 17, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

Did Eve often ponder The voice she overheard- Oaths made to the serpent And the promise of her womb? And did Mary think of Eve When she heard the angel say That in her womb she would conceive A boy to name "God saves"? The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris's...

Treasured Up by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 16, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

Glowing logs and cool of night As shepherds watch their flock Rough assembly of tired men habits of Cain's stock Marginalized and cast aside Marked by field and sun Nomadic pastoral men Some old and some young In her heart treasured up Mary recalls the men Who came to...

Christmas by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 15, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

An infant wriggling In your arms Grunting, rooting, writhing Crying Pushing against you- Or melding into the Topography of your torso True antonym of "abstract" A shoulder wet with reality Should remind you of Christmas The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris's...

Billy Collins on how to start writing poetry (you need to read it)

by M. Gus | Dec 14, 2016 | Uncategorized

Winter Staves by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 14, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris, Winter

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...

Catholic Rhythms

by M. Gus | Dec 13, 2016 | Advent, Bible Story, Rusten Walter Harris

Contested days of rightful claims to celebrate the stories, Rituals, symbols, and traditions handed down My children - will learn the rhythms Of the Church catholic Of Mary, Joseph, and the infant Of divinity incarnate And I have no qualms with criticisms Posing my...

The Glorias by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 12, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

Gloria in excelsis deo Latin phrase from long ago Translation of angelic chorus Sung to those who watched by night The sheep who often wondered off Struck with fear and then delight "Glory to God in the highest" They never cease to declare And now here in Christmas...

Of Edmund and Aslan

by M. Gus | Dec 11, 2016 | Advent, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet, Winter

There were a hundred years of snow before the human children came. Years of frost and chain and shadow when nights were long and only flame could keep away the grasping cold. The creatures hoped; but then the boy traded their hopes for promised gold and forfeit life...

Cherubim by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 11, 2016 | Advent, Bible Story, Rusten Walter Harris

Cherubim - mysterious when imagined Garden keepers with sword aflame Face of eagle, man, and lion Ark guardians of the mercy seat It is said the Lord sits enthroned Upon the cherubim The priest reminded at every turn By angelic temple ornaments Ezekiel writes of them...

Joseph by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 10, 2016 | Advent, Bible Story, Rusten Walter Harris

I'm holding my son Wondering if Joseph too Sang songs to his boy The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris's Advent series on Moss Kingdom: Incarnation, Christmas Eve, Kings, Some Kind of Glory, Chains, Gifts, Quotidian Couple, A Thousand Lights, Eve &...

Strange Redeemer by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | Dec 9, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris

"Chains shall he break For the slave is his brother" Strange it should be Our hope borne upon his shoulders This child birthed in a shepherds town Could he really be the one they say heals the plagues of man's dominion: Injustice, evil, and estrangement? But how time...

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