Culture

  Fright and Flight The sleeping farm was bathed in soft moonlight. A quiet evening, peaceful and subdued; When suddenly a single bovine mooed And then a second answered from her right. The pastured herd of cows was huddled tight Against a fence where each had calmly chewed Its cud...

by Joe Tessitore and James A. Tweedie We are issuing a challenge to all poets to create poems that incorporate word homophones. Call it what you like, but we are calling it a Homophonic Poetry Challenge. Every poem should contain at least one perfect or near-perfect homophone. Puns, while not...

Faust Money ___________________________I sold my soul for silver. ___________________________In blood I signed my name. I soon enjoyed the benefits of wealth, success, and fame. ___________________________I sold my soul for silver. ___________________________The day came to collect, And I couldn’t pay with cash or with renown or with respect. ___________________________I sold my...

The Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is a traditional holiday that celebrates the Harvest Moon (the full moon nearest the Fall Equinox).    Through Mists of Tears The moon shines sharp through mists of tears, Gas, thick bullets, shields en masse. Socialist police bring fears: A preview...

. Quiet Night Pondering by Li Bai (701-762) A bed before the bright moonlight. Does frost below lie on these halls? I lift my head: the moon is bright. I lower it—my homeland calls! . Original Chinese 靜夜思 李白 床前明月光 疑是地上霜 舉頭望明月 低頭思故鄉 . . Century X Quatrain 74 by...

  Philosophers of Marxist ilk designed For leveled outcomes, then they slew en masse. It pleased the Nazi socialists to grind Up twenty million lives—hence, Zyklon gas. The Russian cognoscenti chose to build A communistic state; death charmed again. The truth (not Pravda) is that Stalin killed Nine million lives:...

by T.M. Moore I had just finished teaching one of the adult classes at our church on the meaning of Christmas, using John Milton’s Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity as my text. We examined many aspects of this great poem—themes, development, structure and rhyme scheme, poetic devices, and...

  Today I strolled upon the shore Where Grandad walked in days of yore; Along its sandy, glossy sheen Where once his imprint would have been. And thereupon I did behold ‘Twas here, when I was two years old I dangled from his sturdy hands In gleeful awe of foaming...

Originally published here. ALBUQUERQUE, NM — July 27, 2019 — Sonnet 5, a marriage poem from MacKenzie’s Sonnets for Christ the King, has inspired award-winning producer, composer, and vocalist D.G. Hall to put forth a timeless song in the contemporary pop genre. With its positive vibe, soaring vocal lines, and...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Haiku by W. "Cured Eel" Sabi I came to the sea. I saw mountains of water. I conquered nothing. *** The fisherman drops his line with bated breath down to a certain depth. W. "Cured Eel" Sabi is a poet of Japan and the...

Cape Horn They lifted anchor, spread the sails, __Quit shores where they were born, Bound for spice isles from doubtful tales __By way of far Cape Horn— Rough seamen, fortune-bound, to trade __In gold and peppercorn And woo a grass-clad island maid— __But first to round Cape Horn. They crossed...

Calling China to Task  The PRC has ways to make a foreign capitalist rich With plenty of cheap labor featured in their tempting sales pitch. And as for natural resources, they have plenty of them, too; Whatever it might take to build a car, an AI drone, or shoe. Each...

I. Half-man half-beast I seem to be A thousand years is naught to me For I watch kings and kingdoms die Who once were gods, beneath me lie In plundered graves they rest no more Yet still I stand, through plague and war My broken face hath robbed me not...

Anonymous Diagnosis In ancient China, a sense of propriety did not allow women of high social status, and women in general, to expose any part of their bodies to a male physician. A woman suffering an ailment could only point to an anatomical doll to show the area of the...

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  His frame was gaunt, his income was erratic: The crowd ignored the writer high above Who wrote and brooded in his lonely attic, Starving for beauty, poetry and love. These days, although his Muse is rather quiet, The royalties and praises never cease. He's found his niche, but needs...

(Anapestic trimeter, in the vein of Edward Lear) On June 19, 2007, an official presentation took place of the document "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road," published by the Pontifical Council concerning self-control when stuck in traffic.   Now Driving can be an ordeal; lord knows there are...

An Open Letter to a Fellow Poet for Adam Sedia But why against one poor poet, a hundred men? —Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand) What dreams do come to distress needful sleep, to cause me wakeful to take up my pen and write by Roman candle light of deep portentous...

  Learning Experience The world is filled with rules For making things; and schools Where ziggurats of thought, Erected there, are taught. The language that we use Now hides within a ruse Of passive terms and texts, Protects and disconnects. The work I do is not Perfect and without blot,...

Love Song for a Grapefruit Dear Grapefruit, I of late have been untrue, Seduced by sweet confections of all sorts; My tastebuds languish, and my girth reports Unwanted gain from my neglect of you. The cakes, the cookies left me dull and slow; My sugar-ravaged tongue is all athirst. Now...

from a crown of sonnets I. In Khayelitsha, an urban township of Cape Town, an average of 635 sexual assaults on women travelling to and from toilets was reported each year. . . with total annual costs of $40 million, including medical and legal expenses, lost earnings, and pain and...

Investment Strategies At work we studied many charts and graphs With due attention to the bottom line, But had we dwelt upon our epitaphs We would have spent our days decanting wine. First published in The Flea.   Mosquitoes I’d gladly give a pint or two a year— extracted gently...

I. The Evacuation of St Kilda The remote island community on St Kilda had existed for thousands of years in considerable hardship until, from the 1890s, tourists began to visit in large numbers. The wealth of these visitors introduced the St Kildans to another world far more affluent than theirs...

When our new park enticed me to a walk I saw a dandelion on the trail. Its yellow bloom hung on its broken stalk And it appeared to call me with a wail. Was it a she, or rather she a he? I was bemused: can flowers have a sex?...

I'll never own a leaf blower, I'll never rake with noise, Or drive away God's tiny mole By blasting at his tunnel hole. I'll never own a leaf blower, I'll never scream my task, Or trample over village green, With monster-wicked shit machine. I'll never own a leaf blower, I'll...

  My father woke the day that he __Was in the forest born To find that all gentility __Was from his nature shorn. A base unwilled enchantment laid __That jealous fairy scorned. For in that tale of sleeping maid, __My father was the thorn. His portrait on the cover of...

These Nice Guys after Gwendolyn Brooks NICE CHRISTIAN MAN. A DIME A DOZEN. These nice guys. They forfeit the prize. They get pushed around. They carpet the ground. They exist for others. They strengthen their brothers. They doubt their worth. They inherit the earth.     Joe Spring lives and...

Haiku   When a newborn cries, locked in a room by itself, does it make a sound?   Fog enshrouds the night. Woven in the heavy mist, a thread of fireflies.     In Time - a Limerick When a beautiful moment transpires, In the midst of the smoke and...

Evening Stroll by P.C. Boutens (1870-1943), written in The Hague in 1909, translated by Leo Zoutewelle We wandered much too late today! __Nearby the final bridge, There where the trail just fades away __We turned back toward our ridge. Behind us rose a whitish fog __Over the dusky lands. In...

  This is a tale of sibling rivalry from the 1812 Brothers Grimm collection of Children’s and Household Tales. Similar stories exist in Danish, English, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Slovinian and Swedish folklore and perhaps is related to the ancient Greek myth of Meleager and the Calydonian Bear. The peasants’ fields...

  The Moon, torn from the Sun, her only lover, Rose, starry-eyed and weeping beams of light, A mourning widow left to wisp and hover, A torturously pitiable sight, Wan from the strain of sobbing out her eyes, Now crater-like and dark from sleepless grief, Still hoping that the Sun...

all poetry by Bruce Dale Wise The Captive Caesar by Aedile Cwerbus Though it was many years ago, millennia, in fact, it seems, like yesterday, when Caesar's ship-trip was attacked. He had gone off to Rhodes to study rhetoric, it seems, with Apollonius Molo; the Roman had his dreams. When...

The Devil at Woodstock I was a mere sixteen that Summer day We all piled in a beat-up car and drove To Woodstock, or someplace we had been told That a great spectacle was to occur— An earth-shaking event where all the stars That lit a generation’s sky would be...

Beyond Scientism Old wives’ tales, humble kin of ancient lore, Like road signs carved in stone are durable. Traditionists are deemed incurable By bright authorities who can’t ignore A single variance with “fact,” yet Science Is but a construct based upon the shared Beliefs of narrow thinkers unprepared To entertain...

Gray I feel a certain loyalty to gray. Gray days, gray sweaters, cars - gray everything. Gray soothes and calms. It doesn’t boast, or fling itself before you like some shades do (they know who they are). Gray broods, as if to say, “Let’s wait and see. Don’t get excited,...

  One interesting question is ‘why poetry, specifically?’ I am currently writing an ‘epic’ called The English Cantos, and I have chosen to write my epic in terza rima. There are many forms of story-telling in the modern world, so why write poetry, when in real terms, it is such...

Faith I'm pond scum, someone said today. Some soup primordial, in a bay was struck by lightning. Oh, I see I'm wrought by electricity... then, look! it’s a bacterium who, in a deep delirium, decided he would rather be a worm that crawls out of the sea. From there it's...

Ned’s Revision Ned Kelly was an outlaw, of humble Irish stock; Born to Australian parents who farmed a rural block. Assault at fourteen years of age drew police attention, And further charges followed, too numerous to mention. His downfall was a shootout which earnt him lasting fame For donning home-made...

An ode to Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Sebastian: from Greek “venerable” I touch the pages of your music. Then My thoughts transport to times and distant sounds Where you once dwelt. I think of you and when I do a flood comes up from me, abounds An all-consuming longing, yearning,...

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