Culture

  Bill Butler made a shopping trip each Friday, to the town, Astride his silver bicycle he’d purchased for a crown; For this was many years ago when pace of life was slow And cars were deemed a luxury for Sunday drives, and show; Not meant for simple bachelors with...

by James A. Tweedie The form of the “brief” ordinarily consists of a couplet of anapestic tetrameter with the first soft beat of each line clipped off (x / xx / xx / xx /). The anapest, which functions very much like a dactyl, is meant to evoke a sense...

by James A. Tweedie   If a Contemporary Free-Verse Poet Wrote a Sonnet Today, because I’m early for Pilates, __I stop at Starbucks for a cappuccino, __But change my mind because the mocha lattes __Don’t keep me up as much at night, or so It seems to me. So, in...

  The World Health Organization by Baidu Wercs Lee The WHO has praised Beijing's response to COVID-19's spread, despite the fact of all the many thousands that are dead. The Chinese first detected it November 17, then tried to hide the outbreak, whistleblowers silencing. A study by Southhampton University found...

  Carmen Cygni, a Retourne She holds the sickle and the scythe, Dark clothed and hooded, glimpse of white. A dancer languorous but lithe, She stands between the day and night. Dark clothed and hooded glimpse of white, Peitho beguiles by danse charnelle. She calls defiant, but contrite As fears...

  translation by Jonathan Shoulta Andromache Will you, my Hector, forever go away to where with unmatched hands Achilles makes Patroclus bloody off'rings? ____________________Who will teach your little one with strength to throw the spear, or how to honor the gods, if what I fear occurs and Orcus devours you?...

  Pearls of Wisdom in Times of Crisis by Susan Jarvis Bryant Pearl clutchers of the world, please take a breath: take time to breathe the balm of calm’s bouquet; let rasping gasps of anguish slip away--- not everything you hear is life or death. Pearl clutchers of the world,...

  I pour myself four fingers, or maybe it is five, sit in a broken rocker and slowly close my eyes. I muse on my survival for nigh on eighty years, A victory in heart, despite a wealth of tears. My mind goes whistling past the graveyard of my youth,...

  Mere words have not the power to convey the loveliness laid out before my eyes; this triumph of rebirth; this lustrous day; this crowning of Creation’s enterprise. This is the time when man and bird and beast awaken in the season’s warm embrace. This is when Flora’s variegated feast...

  He has spent a shower of hours obtaining power and glowers from bigwigs in Ukraine--- he’d minimize the drama and he’d be the next Obama if he only had a brain. “You’re a dog-faced pony-soldier!” is negative exposure; they’re words that taunt and shame--- he’d laugh it off and...

The Society of Classical Poets refers to the COVID-19 coronavirus as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.     Flatten the Curve by Rob Crisell “Flatten the curve,” they say to me. “Or...

  Brave Soldiers We after "The Things We Dare Not Tell" by Henry Lawson We muster in the heat somewhere, We sign our oaths, and then we swear, Brave soldiers we, are doing well, Yet, there are things we must not tell. Our orders will ignite our woes, Command is...

  This Luxurious Empire Vesuvius, you have destroyed a world! __With roars of fire and thunder, hails of ash, __You've hurled your blistering soul, with sulfurous flash Of fire-lightning—certain death unfurled! Yet this luxurious empire, paved and pearled __With rich mosaics, where rare fountains splashed, __You've O so capably and...

  Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood Moloch: ancient Canaanite god of child sacrifice Is there one in your neighborhood? The place I call Planned Barrenhood? A Margaret Sanger shrine, a place where Moloch laughs, straight in the face of once-long held propriety, now comes to immorality. “We...

  The blind poet awakes and feels his way Into the living room, where light of day Will find his daughters ready to preserve The words of truth and beauty that disturb His sleep, and roll forth from him like a spool Of thread that needs a needle to give...

  What curve, what contrapposto, shift of weight, Recalls the tusk from which some Gothic hand Had carved the Paris Virgin holding straight My King enthroned upon an ivory stand! What smiles, no longer earthly, but divine, And each the mirror of the other’s joy! What tenderness contained within a...

  The Crown of Wuhan by Daniel Kemper "Hast thou forgot me then?" says she of dreams, "A Goddess arm'd Out of thy head I sprung... Come see the way your princess-queen redeems your works. Do I not know my own? Among those who created me, do I not wear...

  for Mark F. Stone and all his pets The duck has special properties: Like water off its back; If only we as humans could Perfect the duck’s dry knack. It’s not that water isn’t there Or ducks just cannot drown, But always buoyant in a storm, They’re always up...

  Candidatus Non Compos Mentis Joe lacks the humility To see the futility Of running for office While fighting senility. With growing pugnacity, He aims his mendacity At all who object to His clear incapacity. I hold it self-evident A nursing home resident Should not run for mayor, Much less...

  Unbridled Change O tempora! O mores!... Fuit ista quondam in hac re publica virtus... ---Cicero, First Catiline Oration These days of changing values can be hard: What once was just, today's considered wrong. Some things encouraged now at one time jarred, Abandoned now are values once held long. Unquestioned...

  The Author He portrays a lonely figure In his cottage by the sea With his pencil and his paper and his dog. Gone his youthful verve and vigour But remaining in its lee Is the gift that soon will form his epilogue. With the ocean panorama Bathed in twilight’s...

  A Soliloquy on Modern Poetry  I write this, a soliloquy Regarding modern poetry. I don’t appreciate the terse Disheveled nature of free verse. So much of it just seems contrived And of true beauty so deprived. I just don’t understand the thought That rhyme makes people overwrought, Whereas it...

  Waters of Irvine and Annock, flow with my tears, West to the Firth of Clyde and Arran: Soon, soon, Ayr will be mute and barren. Flow, waters, flow, like the passing of long, lost years. Gilliland! Singer of moors and the pensive glen, The muses fade on your final...

  "Save daylight!" spoke the powers-that-be, and everyone supined, except for Arizona, see, which steadfastly declined. Hawaii, too, and certain parts of Indiana judged that darkness suited more their hearts, and from it neither budged. The light, meanwhile, remains unfazed, affected not by men, nor how they measure nights or...

  Now breaking through the crust of snow, pale messengers appear To herald with celestial glow the springtime of the year; With gentle boldness, bursting forth, They beckon warming winds henceforth To melt cold winter's mantle, blowing over moor and mere. For months, the earth, to cold's embrace a captive,...

  My Coat---a Haiku God pays no heed to disguises He can see through--- I've worn myself out.   The Old Poet's Tree I'm bent with age and the cold, empty page has a lesson it can teach: the fruit I see on the Old Poet's Tree is now well...

This isn’t so much an essay as it is an opinion piece where I shoot off a few words in praise of narrative poetry or, in other words, poetry that tells a story. From Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, to Virgil’s Aeneid, to the Song of Roland, the Song of El...

  Who is this finger-waving man--- this millionaire, this communist? Let’s think about him while we can, this grandpa with the Marxist twist. Our wealth, I fear, he’ll commandeer “to help the poor, the indigent!” but from his own steer very clear, contributing not one red cent. Must politicians always...

  Orchards Let Light In “Oh to be like ‘The Man who Planted Trees’” There is a grove that in the meadow grows Where stately fruit-filled stanchions bloom And in the fruit there is a juice that flows Like water breaking from a pregnant womb. As misty dreams rise with...

  A not infrequent problem that a poetry editor must face is a contributor’s intransigence. Sometimes this resistance is on metrical issues or diction, but there are a few poets who dig in their heels on questions of “truth” and “honesty,” as if a poem were a legal deposition or...

Psalm CIV: Benedic, Anima Mea O praise the Lord, my soul. The aspens sigh As high above Mount Axtell in blue sky The hawk cries out God’s glory, and the clouds Grow to a thunderhead that blots and crowds Out light. The Lord’s electric bolts flash down Demonstrative on forests...

Wake-Up Call "Shoulda," "coulda," "woulda" and "whatever" Are telltales that evince velleity In speakers who most probably will never Instantiate authentic seity. For every post-millenial young snowflake There is a vital task that must be done, But if it's harder than a piece of sponge cake, You'll hear those babies...

On a Bereavement I Mourning Sickness Can anybody say how long it lasts, This numbness that deceives while it relieves The harrowed brain? My senseless state contrasts So markedly with that of he who grieves In honest but conventional display, In typecast manner, equally sincere, But may I say, the...

  20 January 2020 My father died, just yesterday, and mom About a year ago; I’m filled with grief For things that were not, might have been, and now Will never be. I’d felt that death would spare My heart—at most I’d shed some tears—but oh! The pain of what...

  On TV, I saw them kneeling __Before their golden cow; Mere worshippers of a flimsy feeling __Desecrating a vow. They’ve never knelt in battle’s fire __Nor bowed in a foxhole; Yet, proudly they display their ire __Spitting on the flagpole. True, you can’t offend an object, __But symbols get...

  The days we choked on rage and fed on tears, that lit my guts with deep and purple flame— but when they go, I wish they still were here. Standing in line for bread, I feel it sheer: the hunger, without eating, eats my frame. Days that choked my...

  In a time long ago, where the high myrtles grow, Lived a tribe of the Bellenden Range. While below, on the plain, in their tropic domain Lived a tribe known for hostile exchange; They had hatchets and spears, paint from eyebrows to ears, And a sliver of bone through...

  Icy, biting breezes cut like knives; Sea-spray wave crests crash upon the shore; Silent, unseen clam and crab life writhes, Buried neath the surf’s incessant roar. Winter beach grass, windblown, stiff and dead, Flagellates the backs of dune and rill; Scratch of sackcloth, ashes on each head; Penance for...

  Through barren fields, beside the ruins of man, The sunlight hardens stains of blood and gore; Macabre deeds that years ago began, Their horror still would haunt forevermore. This open graveyard 'round whose ghastly dread, The trembling air is scared and scarcely moves; A mother somewhere weeps for children...

  I have been bid into the House of Song To merry-make at Inspiration’s fest Alas! I fear my raiment would but wrong The stately host and every lofty gest! See there the orphrey wrought with glinting rhyme! The ragmas* styled with metaphors of gold! Here flows the baudekin of...