Culture

. Rending the Night Remembering My Army Service in Vietnam . Flying bullets rend the night, Sleeping birds in instant flight. See the darkness glowing bright. Sleeping soldiers wake in fright. Targets outlined on the screen, Infrared shows moving green, Men in motion flee the scene, Bombs devour those unseen,...

. Spanish Moss A thicket hides the remnants of a grange, An antebellum place of ghosts and rue--- A gothic ruin---tropical and strange Which even egrets shun. The faintest clue Of why is whispered when the trade wind moans Of shadowed secrets from this voiceless void Of cotton grown from...

. Memento Belli _My father had mementoes of the war; _he kept them in a box above his clothes, _where also hung a uniform he wore _when he was someone in that time ago _till trauma came, caused by the weight he bore from carnage, chaos, unrelenting noise and such—...

. The Plagiarising Poet A young lad sat in class—geography— Bored and in a peaceful reverie. The school bell blared, the teach showed indignation, “The bell does not free you!” she yelled in frustration. “You’ve homework that I need you to complete: Some verse on lands that host the parakeets;...

. Reward for How You Live from Italo Calvino’s Italian folktale “Gesù e San Pietro in Friuli” One night, while traveling on a mountain road, two wanderers came upon a small abode. The vagrants, Jesus and Saint Peter, knocked. The house’s occupant then came, unlocked the door, and opened it...

. Some Words to Catholics about Bergoglio God only knows what’s left to say— Most Catholics drift from day to day, Like refugees in war or flood, Half-starved, or weltering in blood From wounds that fester with gangrene. Our stomachs turn with what we’ve seen And heard from stupid clowns...

. Periodicity Springfield, Illinois, May-June 2024 All our town has caught cicada fever. Seven broods emerge, the selfsame time. This fluke converts me to an awed believer in nature's odd propensity to rhyme. So curious, insect cycles intersect like a comet's rare traverse across our sun. Last seen 1803, this...

. Sidetracked Life’s troubles come in all varieties,From nagging aches that barely raise a frown,To fearsome packs of deep anxietiesThat, given half a chance, will drag us down. Much worse is when assaults get physical,Break bones, tear muscles, even puncture skin.Expressions on good days turn quizzical;On bad days our complaints...

. Home Run Oh my God the play we made, And, really quite efficiently. We had two billion pawns we’d played, Lost sixty million… two or three. It’s almost none, percentage wise. Well worth the effort---gains obscene! And Post-war, what a nice surprise, These small wars keep us in the...

. Ozymandias after Percy Bysshe Shelley More solitary than an orphan’s reachThat vigil, that the shifting peaks repel,A site of none left even to beseech---Less ruthless now, where only fragments dwellNor murmur but the wind’s “iconoclast”…       IMPERIUM itself before it fell. A calm within his silence as it passedAs in most...

. I Hear the Distant Thunder I hear the distant thunder rolling__Across the nighttime sky.Incendiary lightning strikes__Of fire are drawing nigh.If I can keep on writing, it__May be by candlelight.I must prepare for darkness black__On this sad stormy night. The heavy hail is hitting now__Upon my window pane.High winds are...

. . Driven from Their Homes Deported and despised. Compelled to leave. 900,000 driven from their homes With pain enough to fill one-million tomes--- And yet they are forgotten. Will none grieve? . Morocco, Egypt and Afghanistan Iran, Iraq, Tunisia and others Expelled them with a racist hate that smothers...

. The Universal Horoscope and Zodiac Twelve figures in the blazoned zodiac Set by the gods in their unchanging track Spin in a regulated, yearly round Until an infant’s primal, wailing sound Puts an end to labor’s strained dilation. Transparencies of detail, implication Refract to a single jewel: this hour,...

. In Spring 2024, UK poets Jeff Eardley and Peter Hartley crossed paths with American poets James A. Tweedie and Margaret coats in England. . . The Day That I Met Jim by Jeff Eardley The rain was horizontal on this English summer’s day. He’d flown in from Seattle and...

. Poetry Is Warfare A poem is the writer’s battle pleaAgainst asceticism’s barren call.Truth and beauty (air that poets breathe)Needn’t acquiesce to Adam’s fall.A poem with its structure, verse and rhyme,Artistic language and clandestine senseIs no old-fashioned claustrophobic crime.Formal verse is part of the advanceOf a culture that will grow...

. On the 80th Anniversary of D-Day Humanity once more is under threat,when eighty years ago a Western frontwas opened up at Normandy to getanother foot in Europe’s door, then hunt down fascists who for years ruled France’s roost,inflicting death and terror on the folkacross an entire continent. It looseda beast that...

. Today My Brown Sedan Is Two Today, my brown sedan is two, But I behave as if it's twenty, So freezing by a showroom's door, I scan the models—new; aplenty. And busy with an old dollop Of mud, there goes my niece of seven. I wonder how she finds...

. The Witch Hunt I’ve been a lawyer for a long, long time And seen a lot of things that shouldn’t be--- Like rape and murder; every type of violence But now I’ve seen the worst---a made-up crime: A prosecution born of tyranny Not to protect the people but to...

. Finding the Crime “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime” ---Lavrentiy Beria, Head of the Secret Police under Josef Stalin Every blue-state AG and each Soros DA now let dangerous criminals just walk away, while the DOJ, ATF and FBI have political enemies on which they...

. Selling Short The winter wind’s a shot across your brow, An addend to the sense of deficit You wrestle with inside the here and now. You’re happy only in the preterit Or future tense—because you hate the cold And you believe a sleight of handy grammar Can save you. ...

. Phone Home I often talk to radio astronomers, The kind of guys who like to stay anonymous, Who chew on reams of stellar data every day From objects, many million, zillion miles away. In England’s fields, we have the famous Jodrell Bank; This mighty dish could hold a thousand...

. God Knows Tomorrow’s torched and trampled on the street. __We hear the battle cry Of demons dancing to the Devil's beat __As truth and faith run dry. The skies are scorched with ever-rising heat __As hope and daylight die--- So where are we supposed to go from here? Our...

. Leopold and Loeb Or, the Consequences of Ideas A Frenchman’s thought-experiments Argued by Englishmen until A German stripped pure thought from sense; A second then conceived the will; And last, a third who said God died, Made will his god and from it sought The superman he prophesied--- Three...

. The Devotee She moves from one devotion to the next, From this beloved statue to the text Of some obscure or justly famous saint Who’s good at whatsoever her complaint Parochial or personal may be That holds her in the grip of piety. No claim is made here that...

. Surviving Caligula Setting: Caligula’s Palace, the Palatine Hill, Rome Date: 23 January 794 Ab urbe condita (41 A.D.) The Matter: A Praetorian Guard contemplates Rome’s future under the Emperor Caligula. This gladius---this dagger of sharp steel--- Has been my closest comrade since the reign Of Emperor Augustus. I can...

. Love and Vipers for Harrison Butker, the football player criticized for supporting traditional views of women in a commencement address How hated you are for proclaiming love---Not just your own, but love as sacrifice,Selfless and fruitful at once, that puts no priceOn what it builds, and draws strength from...

. Memorial Day, 1984 2024 “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”  ---George Orwell Today we honor those who gave their all In monstrous conflicts in the name of peace; Those who answered altruism’s call For war to build a world where all wars cease--- A lie that...

. The First and Usually Unspoken Rule of Great Writing The greatest rule of writing is to tell A truth, the truth if possible, within The scope of lines set out, to sound the knell Of honeyed feelings, not commit the sin Of telling things untrue, like showing men As heroes always...

. Betrayal a villanelle Today she spied the shadow of a snake Slither through the spreading family tree--- A curse her startled heart finds hard to take. She heard this serpent hiss. Though wide awake A nightmare flared with fanged reality. Today she spied the shadow of a snake. She watched the burdened branches bend...

. Eulogy to the First Ms. Brown or a Divine Comedy of Educators . To my aunt—the second daughter of three, And first to leave us just two years ago: I picture you once sitting on Grandpa's knee And asking him, where do our spirits go When they leave earth? I'm sure...

. Newman, Alone Newman, thirty, alone, asleep in bed, Groans, yearning for his mother, years now, dead--- Alive, her vivid female acts above Had served as lodestar for his childish love. The women he’d seduced, while far from God, were back to haunt his dreams, with sneers, eyes hard (He’d...

. Two Times Two Is Four Now Kierkegaard once wrote a book, __Entitled Either/Or, But for myself, I only know, __That two times two is four. For though the oceans brim with blood, __Foretold in ancient lore, The word still stands through bitter scorn, __That two times two is four....

. Unopened Letters Unopened letters strewn across the floor Addressed to me with your name on the back. Left where they fell inside my slotted door. A postal service-aided sneak attack. I step on them with smug indifference, Rejecting your repentance with distain. A callous disregard my best defense From...

. The Cleft There’s danger for the harmless dove; she swoops Into the cleft of the great mountainside. Her heartbeat calms as she keeps still and mute Surrounded by the rock where she abides. If from her hollow she looks to the vast Skies she sees her predator remains, But...

. Chelsea a true story from I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris “Behold not everybody's beauty: and tarry not among women.” ---Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 42:12 That long-skirt, apple-pie brunette from Kansas Whose wholesomeness shone bright like Moses’ face… I could go on with praise for forty stanzas About her femininity...

. AI's Promise What is the latest ingenious ability makers have made out as mental agility? Smoothly unveiling the newest utility, __though it effusively services whims, it reveals our fragility __more than conclusively. Digital painting and digital writing and digital telephone management; lighting and quickly delighting on schedule, inviting and...

. He Lied About His Age 'Twas May of nineteen seventeen, our country now at war. Will had decided to enlist, this great world to explore. His lifetime numbered sixteen years, he'd lie about his age, His build appeared near twenty, their questions he'd assuage. He fed and milked the...

. Saturn "When we have shuffled off this mortal coil" —Shakespeare "According to medieval thought, the worst planet was Saturn,  sponsor of death, destruction, darkness, and disaster." —Michael Ward When Saturn and his choking rings complete their toils, Malign, diseased senescence, smirking au revoir, Are we to shortly shuffle off...

. Rwanda, April 1994 Inside Nyamata Church the pews are piledwith clothes, the blood that drenched them dull and dry.What demon turned sane men and women wildwith bloodlust that ten thousand here would die? A long-historic grudge again saw light,a tribal discord fanned by men on airwho cried: “Our foes are...

. Herman the Cripple A body helpless in deformity Was mine, though loving parents carried me Full seven years in sick infirmity, Then placed me in the monks’ academy. Their island abbey Reichenau became My home to nurture life, surrounded by The beautiful Lake Constance, Nature’s frame For all my...