Poetry

  If I were to have been conceived Beneath a greater star, My sorrows would have been reprieved By powers great and far. Were I to have been born as strong As storm and fire and sea, Your royal heart would never belong To any man but me. Yet surely...

Inside the desire for revenge is a painful vulnerability, a reminder of damage that won’t leave, and you wish for satisfaction, or just acknowledgment of the wrong. Instead, frustration grows with denial, and suffering returns in intensity, as if time had scarcely elapsed. Better not to ask for what won’t...

To Beauty (Tribute to Sarah Lane, American Ballet Theater Ballerina) Who see you move across the stage Themselves are moved by easeful gifts That vivify as they assuage The day's reflux. Your grace uplifts The torpid languisher, inspires The anti-Philistine, assures The patron this fine art requires Him for a...

By James Sale This is a curious collection from Douglas Thornton: ambitious, epic in its style, containing many great lines and ideas, but also strangely baffling, quirky, and—I have to say—awkward.  The title, for starters, Woodland Poems, certainly led me to expect a kind of poetry that would be immediately...

“London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down my fair lady.” During segregation grocery stores thrived inside Jackson’s ghettos. Then Brown v. Board of Education led the way to integration. A decade or so later our Mississippi Freedom Movement contributed to Johnson’s Civil and...

  Against the Light Watermarks are visible when held against light whispering quality, distinction, louder than a shout— are also used in banknotes ensuring they’re alright: some marks are more visible than others that are about. Whispering quality, distinction, louder than a shout made by subtle paper thickness and density...

If You're a Beggar, Be a Chooser Too (Villanelle) If you're a beggar, be a chooser too, For less is more and more can be a curse. The world will offer anything to you. You must discern the useful from the dross. With patience, judge, for better or for worse....

Old age recycles the body An infant once pink turns blue Nature recalls with rapid speed To complete life’s circle anew Fuzzy hairs on baldy top Steps and thoughts are staid Alpha becomes Omega When life’s mean trick is played Baby teeth are whisked away Clacking dentures enter in Waking...

  Technology I am sick of this world Technology has gone wild I miss the peace of mind I used to have as a child Everyone seems so busy Having somewhere to go Information running rampant But what do we really know? The violence is never ending Greed is the...

Petals in the Winter Three petals on a lily like the snow were held aloft And though the wind through window whipped it so just one fell off Two petals on that lily blue lamented on the sill But through and through Though grief be true It grew that flower...

This eve set as elegant exhibit of skin deep beauty for old yearning stares, is time’s harsh labor’s brief retreat. The hands, henna-designed, serpentine snares to trap young wild and restless hearts which feed on dreams sojourned in eyes, more fleeting than the flashing camera lights. Midst this confused unrest...

for Claudia Why didn’t Sisyphus simply walk away and climb, unencumbered, up the smooth cleft worn in the undulant hillside, up and over that crest bright purple with wild violets one brilliant day? Could a man who outsmarted death miss this no-fuss solution and become eternally dumb? With such an...

Marv’lous Melody I read the words all leaping from the page And hear the joyful rhythm in my head But stop for you, an even-tonéd sage And listen to the words as they are said I could grow old to listen to your voice Each nuance is so pleasurable to...

. . Javelin Ekphrastic Out of the air and shot from a thrust, Clout of the spear, forethought where it must, Wrought from the ancient and taut and released, Slaughtered and blatant, when caught be the beast. Note: Ekphrastic is a Greek word meaning a poem to a work of...

This dieting can be Hell With nary a late-night snack I wage a constant battle When the hunger pangs attack And should I dare venture out To the neighbourhood café The waitress takes my order And “salad” is what I say When at the farmers’ market I’m careful where I...

  In Defense of the Aesthetic Sense When lovely melodies arouse and wake My dormant bliss, or true words do the same, Dark, dour-visaged men intrude to claim My bliss is false, awakened by mistake. To those who fear sweet strains might make us deaf Or landscapes pierce our eyes...

Dedicated to Falun Gong practitioners who have peacefully resisted persecution by the communist regime in China for 17 years, since July 20, 1999.   When the world’s despondent spirit sets in heavy clouds of slumber, One last gaze of thought transports me to the woods of baleful bawling... Gusts of...

Chapter II: Visions and Dreams (For Chapter I click here.) THE band and locals, totaling fourteen, Retired to rest before the looming day. Some went to sleep but most in silence sat, Now meditating, clearing thoughts that prey. With legs both folded firm and yet relaxed, Their bodies felt the...

The waking’s spun with webs of urgent lure And sleep is shriveled dreaming marred by fear. The life allows the walker nothing sure Or level path to others once held dear. But many grasp at getting days with hope And moments still and without vice and shame. A little space...

  C0d0s0 By Leweca Derusbi The Chinese hackers who are known as the Codoso group are infiltrating sites across the Internetic loop. They're breaching banks, law firms, and varied techno-companies; they even once hacked Forbes' website with corresponding ease. There is a murky and much-hyped, emerging industry no longer found...

Lost The angel’s cry, the devil’s kiss: How did you let it come to this? You claimed the darkness too: How when the world was screaming, You thought you’d best be dreaming; You thought the lies were true— O, you have made a mess of things; The world breaks stars...

  When the wind blows true through the land Rustled leaves hold trees that withstand Tempered gusts with vicious intent. So long lives the day when air’s spent Upon the ridge: that jagged rock, Unchanged as what the ticking clock Tries to track but must then accept: The perfect clock...

Jaded I Lay Jaded I lay prostrate in bands Constructed of my self-frustration: The morning waned; so too my elation, Jade-hued, whose kite flew out my hands. All joy is rocks, soon turned loose sands Engulfed by seas' elimination To which my grief (buoy's demarcation) Holds true: Joy sinks, whilst...

This rhyming adaption of the 14th century Arthurian poem is suitable for 4-6 students to perform and only takes about 10 minutes or so to perform.   Characters Narrator Sir Gawain Green Knight Castle Lord King Arthur Castle Lady   NARRATOR Once upon a Christmas time, at Camelot, King Arthur...

Anasazi Mesa castles in the sky Where paintbrush blooms and eagles fly. A people's passage marked in stone; Artifacts of flint and bone. Cliffy cities - vanished host, Sanctum haunt of hawk and ghost; Beseech your mummies rise to tell The secrets time has kept so well. Shadow dwellers do...

The Pharaoh's People and the Locusts We had our land covered by the locusts. On every leaf the hungry, magnet mouths drew the food in until we had to shout our harvest is gone, poisoned by the kiss that feeds the hunger of insects that are cursed to follow fate....

Related Content 'Trump' Presidential Prophecy Poem by Nostradamus Donald Trump (A Clerihew*) Donald “The Donald” Trump Surprisingly took to the political stump What is, perhaps, not as great a surprise Is that he should thrive in a realm ruled by lies. *A clerihew is a whimsical 4-line verse about a...

Cribbed Agency (After a grating entrée) No matter how I madly strove to make sense of the garlic clove the waitress gave me with my plate, it simply made me more irate. And thus, like a rambunctious child, I called her to me, half beguiled that I could make the...

. . Lone Cypress, Pebble Beach Crack of stone for rest and bed, Wrack of storm unpressed I tread, Sun and proud and bright and gold; Dun and shroud of night, I hold. . . Fraternal I have some friends I got by word, We never met and rare conferred,...

So turn whereto it dies, Pulse of a draining sun: The face of daylight’s guise The yield that night has won. See on the far-west front, Goes trotting godly fame: The bull called occident. His white hide bears a name – By what light is yet sparred (Again, he is...

No one can hate you like a former spouse. It sounds like a country-western song, I know, but no one can mutter you’re such a louse as an ex-lover who swears, “What a souse, and if I tried to say a word, he’d go, ‘How’d you like to be a...

Near rugged shores and inky lochs, Schiehallion prevails. As stronghold of the faeries, she’s the guardian of their tales. And at her foot there is a strath with water through its heart— An awe-inspiring stimulus for literature and art. A shroud of grey rests moodily atop her peak of white,...

  So to Speak My teen-aged son talks not as I do; I cannot teach him, yet I try to. If I should use subjunctive mood, He indicates an attitude. Instruction in the active voice Is met with his more passive choice. When I distinguish “different from” From “different than,”...

By Sharon Kilarski | Originally Published in The Epoch Times A sonnet by Betsy Hughes offers unmistakable relief; you can actually understand what you are reading. Words in glistening, clear images form ideas, which gather together unostentatiously to draw you toward satisfaction. For this poet, who champions accessible language and...

April in Washington Around the basin there’s a ring Of cherry trees now blossoming. Showing off the city’s best, They give its residents a rest From all the darker doings there That constitute the normal fare. As I observe the Asian gift, My spirits get a fleeting lift. Forgetting everything...

  Spirit Where once a spirit, pure and bright, Would sail on gossamer wings of light And pass through realms of endless night Amid the stars in blissful flight, Now life resides in flesh and bone, Amid the masses, yet alone, Concealing sins he must atone, The cares of life...

  Our paths vanish; our footsteps fade From forest glades, from wave-damp sands From sunlight’s dazzle and twilight’s shade. Babes and toddlers, not yet afraid, We reach and roll and often stumble From sunlight’s dazzle to twilight’s shade. In youth we lie ‘neath moonlight’s blade, Cut by love; like kisses...

This Will Not Make the News Today "My mother told me to take nothing stronger than aspirin." —Bruce Dale Wise By Dr. Weslie Ubeca O, we have come far from the years of back-yard farmacy, when business had not dented medicine and dentistry, when healthy goods comprised organic pharmaceuticals, when...

  Though I’m eighty and have survived I’m the oldest man that never lived My life flew by too fast for that Each mountain climbed now seems so flat Always a mountain yet to climb, Even now, surely there must come a time When life’s no longer just a test...

2016 Primaries This season, Mr. Trump’s a raging wildfire, a storm ignited by reality TV, fodder for anyone who likes good satire. He’s poised to win as far as I can see. The exit polls are making me perspire. Who gives a damn about democracy? A welcome distraction from death...