Featured Topic: Dreams
Featured Product: Seasons
Featured Writer: poets better and more famous than me
Featured Form: Rondel
Contact:
I Did Not Need Malice to Murder
I did not need malice to murder the little Juniper, thin in its pot. She said, "Have you watered?" and I heard her though earnest and honest, I simply forgot. One can forget for a day, there is pardon, But if one forgets for a week, maybe not. True in love and as true...
For Adam: a sonnet composed at church on the morning that I learned he’d taken his life
I remember, at fourteen, when I dropped my mother's paring knife into the lake, how it seemed that time had slowed, may have stopped-- but a moment too late. The sudden ache in my arms, too slow and too short to reach through watery darks, a blind hope to hold again...
What Fell Mystery Is Aging? by guest writer Judah Ivy
What fell mystery is aging? Some dread erosion to bone and skin The bios inward slows its raging And soil joins to elder kin. Is this some awful tragedy, Some invasive species from without? Our cells do their work with apathy Like old men suffering from gout. Yet time...
Where is the Boy? a Rondel for Stephaun
"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...
From the Dark Tower by Countee Cullen
We shall not always plant while others reap The golden increment of bursting fruit, Not always countenance, abject and mute, That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap; Not everlastingly while others sleep Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute, Not...
The Commander Thinks Aloud by The Long Winters
The Crew Commander Thinks Aloud I heard this song about the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia for the first time on Song Exploder over the weekend. I highly recommend that you give the podcast a listen (only about 15 minutes of explanation as the last couple of...
You Violated Right-of-way: a rondel about how I hope you die in a fire.
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...
Not One of Us Tried to Remember by Duncan King
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...
The Years the Locusts have Consumed
What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; -The Prophet Joel We've eaten all the corn we'd saved for seed and there are no animals left to bleed upon our stone altars trying to appease the storm gods or whoever's there to hear-- who might remove the...
December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter Solstice
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...
Hymn to Prosperine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith) by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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...
Sleep
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep; For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep. —Algernon Charles Swinburne, Hymn to Prosperine If asked to choose: eternal life or sleep, he's not sure how he'd...
Ozymandius by Horace Smith
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the desert knows:— "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone, "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows "The wonders of my hand."— The...
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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...
The Kite: a villanelle on my fear of falling into the sky
Tied to a stake, the string stretched ponderously far arcing into the blue and almost out of sight; it cast no shadow and seemed as distant as a star and slit the sky to a pointed diamond-shaped scar. The minuscule and near invisible sprite hung motionless and still...