Poetry

Rising above the silt and murky mud, Clean and pure is the small pink bud, Supported by a supple stem of jade, Adorned with gleaming dew drops, crystal made. Elegant yet sweet this gentle bloom, Penetrating the bleak, surrounding gloom, Steadfast, and honorable heart unmoved, Its light fragrance adds to...

Shin-Rin-Yoku Forest Bathing You stand beneath this canopy of trees, surrender will, hold still.   You close your eyes and listen as the rustling of the leaves and lapping breeze-blown waters tranquilize. Inhaling deeply, you can breathe the smell of dew-damp soil, the scent of pungent pine, organic emanations.  All is...

Pibroch of the Domhnall   By Joseph Charles MacKenzie Author’s Notes: § The refrains at the end of each stanza are to be recited by the Inaugural crowd. § A Pibroch is a rallying bagpipe tune and is pronounced like “PEA-brohgh.” § Domhnall, the Scottish form of the name Donald,...

  Here is a riddle, a brain-teaser of sorts Rev up your noggin or the answer you’ll miss Mark. Set. Get ready for a fun little sport The pivotal problem goes something like this: Some of gold. Some cold like stone. No wood, no chimney. Yet four rooms With naught...

  Departure Like escaping through a siege, growing older       Hampers itself with hopes of return; So if, over your bare shoulder, Upwind palaces start to smolder,       Let them burn. Woken by ax-hack and sword-clang, at once you knew       Better than to arm for the defense Of gates your foes stream...

Fake News By Caud Sewer Bile Fake news is rather difficult to say just what it is. What's fake to listeners could be what's true to someone else. And no news outlet can be free from slanting what they find, and crafting articles that seem to fit their point of...

  The Terrorists Tears feed the sweeping sands beneath their feet, And blood runs deep into the living ground. The sun throbs down with agonizing heat. The captives kneel, blindfolded, with no sound: Only the jitter of the distant bug, The hum of desert winds above the trees, The spikes...

  The gown and the date are set, caterers and florists I’ve met. The hall has been booked, no detail overlooked Wait...I don’t have a groom just yet!   There once was a very young rat who thought himself a big, black bat. So, he leapt off a chair and...

  The Desert We were flying in a desert, an oasis to drink dry. We gorged ourselves on date palms and spat in nature’s eye. We’ve been lying in a desert where the wine of life’s run dry, for the plane’s no more returning, all the fuel’s been blown sky-high....

  We may hear some Bible phrase and laugh. __That book has no monopoly on ‘goods’. Some words clang, we tip its old tin bath __and out rolls “Baby Jesus” with the suds. Like cliqué’d, much-repeated, ringtone rings __whose lyricisms lessen with their use, these old-time, evangelic heraldings __are squeezed...

By Dusty Grein Dating to the thirteenth century, the terza rima (Italian for "third rhyme") is a classic form of writing poetry in three-line stanzas called tercets, which are interlinked by their rhyming pattern. They use the ending sound from each tercet’s middle line, as the first and third of...

Water Music Just as white as a blanket of new-fallen snow Is the noise of a waterfall cresting a brim And ebulliently thrashing the basin below. But the sound of a freshet resembles a hymn, Its discrete iterations like chants that were spoke By the guardian spirits of hillside and...

The Speaker Unaccustomed to Such Oratory Feats The speaker - unaccustomed to such oratory feats - cleared his throat, a bit too loudly, while he fumbled through his sheets. The crowd sensed, early on, that they were in for a rough ride - when he called the "ladies" "laddies" and...

By Evan Mantyk From The Iliad, Beowulf, and Shakespearean literature in the West to the Chinese Classic of Poetry, the Indian Ramayana, and the Middle Eastern Epic of Gilgamesh, classical poetry is the foundation of literature in almost every culture historically. Today, if you can understand, appreciate, and write a...

  Color streams burst brightly in a flourish of elation, Each to soar and cover night's condoning, lofty, canvas – Livening this moment, man-made shooting stars' vibration Emanate our gladness to be living. Will they preface Broad displays of kindness to complete this hopeful painting? Righteous souls endeavor, far and...

  Tapestry A Miltonian Sonnet The pattern on the underside confused By snarl and tangle, jumbled, twisting knot. Its warp and woof embroidered without thought It seems: the flawless linen now infused With spots of wreckage--perfect weave abused. “A waste of thread,” I cry, upset, distraught, And try to pluck...

  How Can You Feel Blue? How can you feel blue When you look toward the sky And see the darkling silhouette Of birds, as gracefully they fly In strict formation 'cross The iris of your eye? How can you feel blue When you pause upon the shore To watch...

For King Charles I of England On the day I asked for a second shirt So my people would not see me shiver In the cold breeze blowing from the river And think me afraid to die or be hurt On that scaffold above the mud and dirt, Or mistake...

  There are no predators in the wood So deer run free who never could And hunting’s forbidden So deer don’t stay hidden And ticks thrive in trillions Off the hides of millions Spreading diseases and infection Which reaches us without detection Until suddenly the whole community Is looking for...

  Holiday Horror: A True Story By Lucy Giardino Cortese Twas two weeks before Christmas And all through the house Water standing in puddles Mama starting to grouse Three pipes in the floor Had all busted their stuff Brown shag carpets soggy One would think that’s enough But the calamities...

To Michael Dana Gioia* By Cal Wes Ubideer The Word within the World that articulates itself does not exist in sunlight or in leaves upon a shelf, upon computer monitors, or on stones on a path; the Word speaks only dialects of purest being's math, the human kiss somehow divine...

  Unspoilt, unique, a soulful place Ancient oaks all around Scattered acorns sprouting shoots New life emerging from the ground I touch the parchment bark of birch It's leaves shimmering in the breeze My spirit soars in the forest glade Resurrected there among the trees It takes me back to...

. . On the Winter Solstice Winter Winter cold and crass Winter Winter old the grass Fast we go across the field Massed the snow and frost to wield Night of rest abed when tired Light and fest and sled and fire . . Caryatids At lunch I sat and...

  Scrabble-ism One night I was hangin’ with Len, Eating and watching t.v. All the pizza rolls gone, I then Suggested Monopoly. “That game is all luck!” he then said, Voice revealing some anger. “Scrabble,” Len suggested instead, To which “yes” was my answer. Scrabble is, no doubt, a great...

By Jane Blanchard On December 5, 1830, Christina Rossetti was born in London to an Italian-English mother married to an Italian poet in exile.  The youngest of four children, all of whom grew up to be published authors, Rossetti became so well regarded for her work that she was mentioned...

The first Society of Classical Poets sponsored "Rhyming Poetry Reading" was held at The Tea Garden in Middletown, New York, on December 18, 2016. The open mic featured readings of rhyming poetry by renowned poets such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and John McCrae. Original poetry by...

  To the Kurdish Women Soldiers With girlish smiles above costumes of war - you dance, sisters; stamp the pallid golden dust to furbellows about your booted feet. Cold light, drab uniforms are aching sweet unstifled by the long black veil of lust, pride and friendship warming at the core....

  Witches’ Brew Round and round the seven seas go, In the putrid poisons throw, Double, double toil and trouble, dolphins die and oceans bubble. Extract of mercury, pcb’s, poison waters by degrees. Tampon inserts, medical waste, to melt a turtle’s carapace. Make the potion more desirous, add bacteria, morbillivirus....

. T.M. Moore is a theologian, poet, and Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife and editor, Susie, live in the Champlain Valley of Vermont. They have four children, twelve grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. T.M. and Susie have collaborated...

  Sighs fill the room as Mulan weaves the loom She doesn’t want Father to meet his doom. The Khan needs an army to face the Huns; Father can barely walk let alone run. There’s none to take his place and perhaps die: Little brother’s too young to even try,...

by Dusty Grein The sestina originated among the troubadours of medieval France's Provence region, and the modern thirty-nine line form is attributed to one of these traveling poet entertainers of the twelfth century, Arnaut Daniel. Daniel's sestina form was admired by Dante Alighieri, who introduced it to Italian poetry as...

  Kitty staring at the tipped fishbowl (whoever felled it left not a hair), With no one home, what was, do you think, The mysterious force that toppled it there? I will honestly say I do not think That ghosts and such visit much these days Or that Petey Canary...

  Obi-Wan Bin Laden RIP Let’s remember what God wants: Killing people’s never right, So Obi-Wan Bin Laden then Cannot be a Jedi knight. To make folks free you face them straight - Backstabbing lacks God’s protocol; So Obi-Wan Bin Laden looks Like something that has lost its soul. He’s...

A rondeau on Shen Yun Performing Arts By Evan Mantyk I love the dance that can exalt The human form without a fault, Demeanor grand, inspiring pose; They’re swift yet seem in sweet repose And all my troubled thoughts they halt. Then when as one they somersault It’s like a...

  Ohio State University Attack By Wilbur Dee Case "If you don't like liberal democracy, go to North Africa, the Middle East, or China. Oops." —Waseel Budecir I'm warning you, America, the post on Facebook states, behind each single Muslim's frown, a sleeper cell awaits. We are not weak. We...

  In an Unfinished Honeycomb:  An Old Story As lichen on a rock expands, so you grow in love on the lap of your mother until --- smothering her presence you burst aglow into green adolescence. Seldom still, you run before the bulls, climb peaks, favor dreams to feed your...

Unforeseen Good Fortune’s Heirs Are We There’s little of the Plague that we can find to celebrate except for this small gem – when those who died left property behind it often changed their family’s lives for them. Their station rose, by education freed from toiling years in poverty and...

  Dedicated to Falun Gong practitioners who have faced seventeen years of persecution in China. As tempests are blowing, angry waves clash; The foaming sea roars, whilst lightning doth flash. Eternal clouds march across the bleak sky, To sailor’s dismay, the heavens now cry. Braving the rain, the wind, the...

  Wood Nymph A wood nymph knocked on my door last night           her hair was flaxen gold the ivy trailing through my mind           another story told: of winding rivers, banks and willows           together we had seen and in her presence wild pheasants           like the peacock seemed. The iridescence that she...

  Exhale swift, what crimson breeze; Amber crisp and fuchsia Colors adorn leaves on the trees Their coats of misty rouge. And clap, applaud with festive show Aware not of the scent; The musky smell of rot and woe Swoop, glide on currents brisk. Finger tips reaching for the ground;...