Culture

  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...

                                      Amy Foreman hails from the southern Arizona desert, where she homesteads with her husband and seven children.  She has enjoyed teaching both English and Music at the college level, but is...

translated by Leo Zoutewelle To you my word will be reproached as lie, Maliciously: “who left you so maligned, In vain are all the days in which you pined For him who cheated you and made you cry.” But I have weighed your virgin heart before And know your strength...

  The 50¢ Army by Lu "Reed ABCs" Wei The Chinese Communist regime, has recently dispatched some 1600 online trolls to stifle and to catch. The censors want to stop all sensitive materials, especi'lly those relating to coronavirus tales. The Chinese Communist regime does not want bloggers to blog stories...

Natural-Born Jeremiah 17.19 I am a liar, natural-born. I find it more convenient to equivocate or stretch the truth, than to accept the fate truth might impose. What’s more, I am the kind of person who will take the credit due to others, tarnish your good name, or steal as...

  A Truly Perfect Love My fingertips caress your hair and I no longer have a care about what happens in this mortal plane. I lay you down upon the bed and then I gently touch your head and you surrender love to me again. I feel your tongue from...

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ6QuvFS068    

Aranjuez (ar-ON-wess) has been one of the estates of the royal family of Spain. It is near Madrid and the Tajo (TAW-hoe) River flows through it. The Fountain of the Thorn includes, as its centerpiece, a bronze statue of a young boy removing a thorn from his foot. This is...

  Five Rivers to Cross I sat down by the river Styx to wait upon Phlegyas, ferryman of old, among the uninterred who congregate and those who do not have a coin of gold. The boat arrived—I did not hesitate, but climbed quickly aboard, and acted bold. Traversing this River...

  By lamplight through the long night hours, he kept his vigil by her side, His love still fresh, though wilting flowers adorned the room on every side; He would not give her up for dead, but tended her with loving care And would not leave, though many said it...

  Poland Brave nation, strong and proud you stand, a Boulder in the stream One nation, people hand in hand, who’ll rob you of your Dream? Though much withstood, still more to stand you’ll see in coming days; Yet you will match this new malaise with brilliant new displays. Once...

translations by Alan Steinle Translator's Note: This poem (“Tres cosas”) was originally written in Spanish by Baltasar del Alcázar (1525-1606). I have translated the poem into English and have retained the abba rhyme and the eight-syllable lines.   Three Things I’m a prisoner to all these, and I’m as happy...

  To Whom It May Concern Who writes letters anymore, and in verse? I don't care whether you like it or not. I suppose I could have phoned you, or worse— dropped in. I'd be putting you on the spot. You're just like everyone else nowadays, no face to face,...

O, Where Is Love? by James A. Tweedie O, where is love? You’ll find it in the pain _That binds a mother to her newborn child; _In bitter-broken friendships reconciled; _And in the kiss of lovers in the rain; In being kind and offering a smile _To hardened hearts too...

  I thought and thought of pride and pride began to grow and over-ride my common sense until I thought the thought itself was what I sought— nor could I sense the meaningful sense that I, a common fool were trapped in blindness of the self (it's not a road...

by Michael Curtis | excerpted from Occasional Poetry Tradition grows from wisdom, from the accumulated experience of millennia; in poetic practice, our classic tradition grows from the craft of Ages. Change is slow, development slower; five-hundred, six-hundred, a thousand years might pass before language, our language, Shakespeare’s language becomes to...

  a rubaiyat Step gently O' my boy, this 's your first day... light-footed sweet and slow... on sinking clay. A farmer's school, this paddy field O' son, this's where you read and learn a yeoman's way. Ye bow to the earth and take her benison. Here she's the text...

  a villanelle The mortal eyes in time shall wilt away, as fast as breath retreats its kiss from glass, but delight they will on the endless light of day. We never had enough of dawn’s array, of green of grass and blue of sky which pass. The mortal eyes...

. Uncle Joe's Last Stand “Lying, dog-faced pony soldier!” Blurts out Biden, as he scolds her. Eyes unfocused, can’t walk upright; Goes not gentle into that night. Mind adrift, his brain a rebel. Voice reverts to childish treble. Conduct strange and unbecoming. Dentures loose---he’s always gumming! Barely holding on to...

  Bongo, bongo, bongo, I don’t wanna leave the Congo, Oh no, no, no, no, no! Bingle, bangle, bungle, I’m so happy in the jungle I just don’t wanna go! —Danny Kaye and The Andrews Sisters, 1947 The Vatican is dull and dreary— It leaves me out of sorts and...