Poetry

  The Day the Persecution Began "The year is 1999, July, A king of terror would come from the sky,” The Frenchman Nostradamus prophesized Indeed, the red dragon in China flies. It covers all in its violent shadow, Into detention centers it throws The practitioners of Falun Dafa, The hardworking...

He Kept On By Erisbawdle Cue He kept on striving to attain an ideality connected to the good, but grounded in reality. He kept on working to achieve perfection in the act, pragmatism on the run with satisfaction's fact. He kept on pressing to combine both ecstasy and truth, to...

Just a Dream I. You vowed to descend to the world below, In an agreement that was made. To the mortal world others dared not go, Yet what would happen if you stayed? A promise to save sentient beings, Empowered your hesitant heart. Your compassion for all living things, Made...

Tares in the Wheat "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” Luke 9:62 “The sun will burn; the heat will cause you sweat; Dust will choke before the sun is set,” Michael Curtis, -“Novice”- When I recall various seeds...

Youths' Sonnet They view the world through filmy innocence, these youngsters who now hear the future call. Into that forest bountiful and dense, some travel slowly, wary of the fall. With nurturance and guidance young ones need and patience to sustain and keep them strong, they labor long and hard....

I've had some poems I could submit but now I've got behind a bit, they're packed inside the silent hive of a sev’ral-year-old, old hard drive tho’ un-backed-up, their form survives in sev’ral forms of after-lives, some stuck fast inside the lump that's hard as nails and gives me stump...

The British are coming! The whole fourth estate Must wear what is smart For William and Kate. The British are coming! Men, watch how you dress: A jacket and tie Should lead to success. The British are coming! So, ladies, look nice: A suit, pants or skirt, Would likely suffice....

To incarnate legally─ No reincarnates can be found In Beijing’s atheist compound─ In this city where dead is dead─ A reincarnate could lose his head! No passports may be issued now To souls returning once again─ The Dalai Lama must disavow That he remembers more than men─ The frightened leaders...

Our Day in the Sun We, each of us, every one Have had our day in the sun Came a time that day was done Let us then no longer dwell On what we consider we did well Time moves on –so must we all.   If for Change You...

"...that best portion of a good man's life;     His little, nameless, unremembered acts     Of kindness and of love."         —William Wordsworth, Lines Composed...Above Tintern Abbey At any time in life, the little kindnesses occur. Somebody greets you with a smile brightening 'Yes, sir!' One store clerk reassures...

Life Ravaged forests again take root Life nestling within the sturdy acorn Cannot be throttled Ashes reborn yield bitter fruit Fragrance scattered upon the winds Cannot be bottled   The Old and the New What shall Lord and land and hall and bower Castle and fen and glade and tower...

Dandelions She touched their gray-haired afros tenderly: an urban six year old with kinky hair who pounced on dandelions (bud-vases were full of yellow stubby). Telling me: “This is the way that dandelions age” – then blew upon them (instant baldness), sad that “no one liked them but the wind...

Canadian reservist Corporal Cirillo was killed this day at the War Memorial in Ottawa, while standing in his ceremonial and Scottish dress, Glengarry bonnet, kilt, red garter flashes, and the rest. He was a barrel-chested bouncer at the Club Absinthe, an ordinary guy assassinated at the plinth, by some crazed,...

The tip jar was snatched at O Cafe. O! “Somebody just picked it up,” mused the guy at the register. I’d stopped in to buy six ounces of beans, fresh sweet espresso, number two grind. The young baristas know their stuff. They're very warm--no snark. So why did you make...

Fall Haiku New England college towns: Pumpkins, apples, breakfast in a warm café. Swamp-maples afire! Rusty colored barns, silos draped in bittersweet… In their black pea-coats, off of the Metro North, the leaf-peepers arrive. Cross-country. Small-town football. The leaf-smell hunting— God I love the Fall...   The Little Vector (a...

From the Pages of Washington Irving, for my Hudson River Friends Whoever 's made a voyage up the Hudson must remember Catskill Mountains, a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, I trust. West of the river, swelling to a noble chance, their hues and shapes are magical barometers. When...

French Suites Each keystroke is precise, clear as a verb Untouched by modifiers. Sharps and flats Are reliable as death, the light trills All mapped out. This strict staff allows no room For cadenzas. Play it as he wrote it. Still, out of all that, out of each note hit,...

  Waiting at a Bustop Under an Umbrella By Damian Robin The pro-democracy tear-soaked bud could burst into a petaled flower flood. Protesters gorged the city like a sea and said they’re not against the CCP, that foreign power just a march away. But that had been a public holiday....

Two Months On I walk between the tired trees restless soldiers standing ground pray for just a tiny breeze bringing me a cheerful sound. Bubbling ruby robins tweet, squirrels dart from tree to tree. Leaves crunch underneath my feet. All these sights I love to see. Two months past my...

610 is there to take it down, the Falun Gong, that touches Dao. It's clear to see the dangers of forbearance, truth, compassion, love.   Note: The 610 Office, created on June 10 (6/10), 1999, is an extra-legal agency whose sole purpose is to persecute Falun Gong. The 610 Office...

Courage I saw a tiny spider spin a web Within my humble hut between two beams. He tried to throw a thread across, it ebbed Away.  He did not have the will, it seemed. And then the tiny spider tried again, Again he failed to reach the other side. Five...

I saw the face of beauty fixed Upon the rising sun Beyond all mortal compliment Her loveliness there shone Within the constellations set Against the heav’nly realm She glittered ‘cross the universe My heart to overwhelm The Seven Sisters ne’er could light All heaven like her smile Nor Aphrodite’s sweetest...

Lamenting our Complicity in the Installation of Suicide Nets I met a “bum” outside an Apple store holding a sign which read: “I’m taking bets.” “On what?” I said. “On something that’d abhor maybe the most insensate, calloused vets.” I curiously said to tell me more. He had no problem,...

  "Breathes there a man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself has said, This is my own, my native land." —Walter Scott I saw this stolid man stand tall, and obviously proud. He wore a bit of blue and white, o, Scotland, strong and stout. He looked like...

A counter to a Walt Whitman poem When I first heard the learn'd astronomer explain his proofs and figures, and arrange the particles of this vast universe, I was excited; I was not estranged. I truly loved his charts and diagrams. They made the cosmos understandable, as if I'd found...

Chinese Cameo 1 Here’s a tale of friends and family— Near the founding of the CCP, Zhou Enlai and Sun Bingwen were friends, both Party members seeking sim’lar ends. Both heaved and puffed up Party power chains. Both pulled and pushed to help with Party gains. Sun died and Zhou...

  I hope your life will offer you new opportunities, that you will find contentment in the choices that you seize. Remember family's important. You can count on us, especially when the way of life is hard and mountainous. Remember to believe in goodness, when you're down and out. Remember...

  When snow arrives As long forecast, It sets a scene That does not last; But for the while Snow sits around, All else remains Transfixed, spellbound.   Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia. Her work has recently appeared in Concho River Review, Mezzo Cammin, and Orbis. Featured Image:...

For the Mid-Autumn, or Moon, Festival My Ford Explorer would ascend no higher: Stuck half-way up that driveway's first steep hill. 'Twas a December night so cold and dire, The truck, that old machine, had lost its will. Not I, I sprang right up and looked about, Fit spikes upon my boots...

  The Truth James Foley Stood For, a Ten-nos* James Foley, searching for the truth, a photo journalist, was murdered in cold blood by a masked IS jihadist, beheaded on a video in deserts of Iraq, mercilessly, cruelly, by a killer dressed in black. The guy who only wanted to...

Untitled Savants like to arrange their stars and push their poets into piles: marble-misers who assign the jars according to the artists’ styles. They line them in their fusty den when they deem an era’s past, and deign to burp them now and then, but work to invent a ‘new’...

There’s a wonder about it, the fragile beauty of lace. Many kinds for centuries have been important to own; one can go to Ireland, Flanders, from place to place— they’re in catalogs: Irish, Mechlin, lace for the home. Many kinds for centuries have been important to own; even I have...

There are a number of reasons for writing poetry, and alas they are not all good; for not all poetry is good, and indeed some ‘poetry’ is not poetry at all. This is not to denigrate anyone’s effort, but you don’t want to pay for a gold ring and get...

The Commissars Oppose Falun Gong They were old, had lost their youth, So, like the old, repressed the Truth. They fumbled, rigid in expression, So stiff – they lacked Compassion. Their purpose was interference, Lacking right Forbearance. In all this, all they had lost: Truth, Compassion, Forbearance – No Tao,...

In Rembrandt's scene of 1653, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer, there is much that we can see amidst that musty sett(l)ing of gold dust that balances upon the old and new, upon the dark and light, upon the dead and living, giving forth beams of the true and glimmerings...

The Bored Knight A tired knight rode to his castle After a long day of hassle. He bowed to the land’s king, his lord, “My liege, I’m incredibly bored, I’m more like a stupid monkey Than protector of royalty I stand there at the outer gate Like moldy food that...

The allegory of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne isn't flawless; yet it is, in places, good. The A itself does signify adultery, able, and angel, as well as in the hornbook phrase, "in Adam's fall, we sinnéd all." I also think it represents America, a nation married to the...

  Spring Haiku I’m optimistic; like a brand new tennis ball, everything’s chartreuse. The brook trout’s belly is like a sunset I saw; its stipples the stars. Papa bear’s hungry. He tests his weight on the bough. I’ll need more bird-seed. The calf on the grass, steaming in the morning...

  She could not see the avalanche cascade from foam-flecked marble rapids, being blind, but torrents of egrets and apple blossoms played whirlpools of nebulous beauty in her mind. She could not hear, tumultuous mystery, the thunderous plunge, a sea's storm-breaking crests, crescendo of a choral symphony, only the silence...

I. The Tin Shant on the hill in Martinique is stoutly situated, unique in design, and built half a century ago.  Though stucco and cinderblock, we call it the Tin Shant due to a fine-sounding tap on the tin roof during rain.  Lovely sounds when you’re comfortable and dry. What’s...