Poetry

. Book Reviewed: What Was and Is---Formal Poetry and Free Verse, by Theresa Werba, Bardsinger Books, April 2024 by James A. Tweedie With What Was and Is—Formal Poetry and Free Verse, Theresa Werba (formerly known as Theresa Rodriguez) has gifted those of us who love formal poetry with a collection...

. FIRST PLACE . Free to Be the PRC by James A. Tweedie According to the PRC’s unwritten protocol,To be Chinese these days it seems you can’t be Falun Gong.Your race or where you’re born no longer matter much at all.You have to be an atheist in order to belong....

. Rosella My Lone Star mother beams a summer smile As golden as the sun-hugged coastal plains. In snake-proof boots she trekked that extra mile To settle my assimilation pains. She steered my English foibles through the wild And yellow-rose-blessed land I've grown to love. By taking on this bruised...

. A Mother’s Day Sonnet I hope you have a happy Mother’s Day And take a moment out to feel the love I’m sending to you there, though faraway, Like kisses raining down from high above, Each one a memory of what you’ve done For me in years that passed...

. S.W.A.M.P. Soulless, Warped, And Monstrous People look at us as smelly “sheeple.” Easily manipulated. Otherwise, we’re mocked and hated. Those revolting, loathsome creatures, all have normal-looking features, and since each one’s always lying, they are hard identifying. They’re well-practiced at concealing what their blackened hearts are feeling as they...

. Hookerville School Built just before the Civil War, employed till twenty-nine, This one-room school that stands today withstood the test of time. Turn back the clocks to times long passed, so many years ago, Some children trudged a mile to school, through rain and sleet and snow. Upon the...

. Orpheus We want the heroes back so we can learn: Herakles smashed his way to hell and stormed By violence the ferryman and three-faced dog; Even yanked Theseus from his deep-rooted seat Without a by-your-leave to hell’s dark lord. Is that the way to go? Now is our turn?...

. 10/7/2023 More than one has risen up against us to destroy us. Rather, in every generation they rise against us to annihilate us. —The Passover Haggadah The world is killing Jews, again. There are too many for its comfort. It kills because it simply can— its evil ever ripe...

. All Aboard!   a pantoum He’s pumped and ripe to ride the gravy train. He’s armed with cheese and charm to save the day. He’ll pulverize all poverty and pain. He’ll magic melancholia away. He’s armed with cheese and charm to save the day. From golden heights his Midas might...

. Epicure's Delight A wondrous day, my love, is this— An afternoon of utter bliss! The two of us alone at last Embracing tightly, holding fast! The setting sun could scarcely vie To match the fire in your eye. No tender blossoms can compete With loins like yours, so soft...

. On Scotland Police were inundated with over 7,000 calls in the first week following the passage of Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act last month. Where tartan, tweed, and Highland Games began: The land of Gaelic-gathered tribe and clan; Where Scots and Angles, Britons, Picts, et al Would push...

. To a Beet I sing the bristled hedgehog grainno horticulture can explain,with six sly seedlings in its brain:__the unborn beet.  That hook-and-hollow hydra seed, a spiny knell to nascent weeds;nor leaf nor rootlet can impede__those fuchsia feet. I sing the painted plum-wine sproutsthat spring aloft---as one, no doubt---outrageous rings that...

. When Less Is More An SCP Poetry Challenge by James A. Tweedie In a recent email exchange with a poet friend, I found myself typing the following sentence: “Poetic forms, such as sonnet, etc. force poets to trim their words down to the minimum for maximum effect.” This raised...

. The Cropland Though coins, good health, and victualsAre mortal man's essentials,I pray for great fertilityOf that arable land in me,Where crops of different names take birth:Love, Beauty, Humour, Grief, and Mirth.I reap them with the pen I hold,And this, in turn, makes lines unfold—The food on which my life...

. A Curse Against a Thief from the Carmina Burana Let the thief who stole my cap be by death collected: Let it happen suddenly, and be unexpected; After death, to endless pain let him be subjected; Once he’s gone may Paradise consider him rejected. Let the thief who stole...

. A Formalist Poet at the Open Mic Part II: The First Reader by Daniel Kemper Keith stands up semi-gracefully in the dead center of the metal folding chairs, gives his patented sugary-surly smile, swings his head in a short semi-circle and swishes his hair back, and tucks it behind his...

. Truth Is Not Beauty “What is the worst mistake you ever made in bed?” Reply: “My son.”  (Actual dialogue on social media) I learn the truth; I’m more and more aggrieved. There’s nothing left, no gleam or glint of hope When parents wish their children weren’t conceived. What bitter...

. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR0MktU78bA . . Andrew Benson Brown has had poems and reviews published in a few journals. His epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, will chronicle the major events of the American Revolution if he lives to complete it. Though he writes history articles for American Essence magazine, he lists his primary occupation...

. A Divine Mistake? Dear Father up in Heaven, Why create thou rats. Six times out of seven They even scare the cats. Why create thy creature’s eye So beady and so small, With no redeeming features, Why create thou them at all. Your works indeed delight us, How constant...

. The Sultan’s Aging Son Recalls the Hippo Hunt “The Hippopotamus Hunt” by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1615-1616 “The sultan sent three sons…” His voice is frail; the boys lean in. “On horseback, battle bound, we marched with two barbarians to the sound of barking curs at our feet and a distant...

. Overkill K.I.S.S. ("Keep it simple, stupid.") My heart enflamed with rapture, burned With passionate desire; yearned For her and only her, consumed By fire. And like a flower, bloomed Poetic as I told her of My fervent, everlasting love In words so beautiful they shamed The works of laureates...

. Bridgerton’s DEI vs. Historicity They sacrifice true historicity, So DEI trumps authenticity. But Bridgerton and Netflix, they don’t care, Because those ethopaths with neon hair Give fat cats in their boardrooms such a scare. Black aristocracy in England, when? I know a Frenchman with a skillful pen: Dumas was truly aristocracy;...

. Reservoir Those who can still see through accreting years Are getting scarce, those who can lift such veil To remember when the Corps of Engineers Dammed a minor river to end its tale Of flood and misery among the local Communities of farmers and the like. The reservoir’s now...

. Carmen by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) translated by Bruce Phenix Carmen is thin—a dark-brown line Of bistre rings her gipsy eye. Her black hair bodes a dark design, The Devil gave her skin its dye. She’s ugly, every woman feels, But men all find her madly sweet: Toledo’s great Archbishop...

. The Society of Classical Poets Journal XII has been published! It features poetry, translations, and essays selected from those published on the SCP website between February 1, 2023 and January 31, 2024. See the Introduction and Table of Contents below. The Journal also features exquisite color art created by...

. Easter Evening Appearance Luke 24 Sealed up within my upper room, Absorbed by morbid discontent And fear, I questioned everything I’ve done and wondered what it meant. Though slim perspective chided me And better angels gently mocked, When I’m alone there in that room, The door is pretty firmly...

. May Songs . I. Where does loyalty take its rest? Where is charity’s portraiture, Except in you, sweet virgin pure? Where has virginity possessed The honor due its high allure? Where does loyalty take its rest? Where is charity’s portraiture? Where can a creature find the best Retreat and...

. Some Can't See the Beauty Some can’t see the beauty in __A flower or a tree. I call them nature blind because __Their minds won’t let them see. Perhaps it’s biophobia— __A general fear of nature— Or hylophobia—a fear __Of forest nomenclature. Some fear the sand on beaches, __Or...

. The Cartographer of Neverland inspired by a Qatar funded-map, in a Brooklyn public school, that erases Israel I’m late, so please forgive if I’m abrupt. I have to wrap this map up for Qatar. They’ve asked me to remake the world on paper And edit one small country into...

. Throughout American Academies One hears throughout American academies a strainthat is at once belligerent, intolerant, and strange.It drips with antisemitism all across the land.What new “Mein Kampf” is being written? What new hate is planned? From Harvard, Stanford, Michigan State University,to Swarthmore, Tufts, U of Chicago, SUNY, MIT.Unbated seething,...

. Lie Low, Jew! Echoes and Irony The Hamas flags are raised on London streets By swarms that seethe with scorn and blaze with hate. This nasty nod to History’s evil greets  A Londoner reminded of the fate  Of kin as he strolls from the synagogue  Looking far too Jewish for the taste Of bulldog bobbies...

. Third-Degree Burns A young poet who came from Dundee Looked around him and then took a knee, __For the older he grew __The more surely he knew That accomplishment wasn’t to be. But another lad, whom we’ll call Angus, Who was wont to berate and harangue us, __Said, “They...

. If I Have Gone To Sleep If I depart in early sleep__And cease to be with you,My thoughts I'd leave for you to read,To hold your hands in times of need,__to soothe your grieving too.I've written words you have not read__That speak of you, my love.In them, I do...

. How Many Wrongs Make a Right? The left rights wrongs by doing wrong, but wrongs so fixed don’t stay fixed long. When things re-break, they wrong once more, and hope thereby they can restore things back to how they briefly were when right and wrong began to blur. They...

. On Student Protestations They protest on behalf of Gaza from afar— Why won’t they do the same regarding Myanmar? To speak of Falun Gong and China’s Muslim Uyghur Will get you vacant stares—the understanding’s meager. Sudan’s embroiled in civil war, but they don’t care— When blacks kill other blacks,...

. Watching My Children at Play in a Graveyard Laughing, the children slip between the stones Laid out in rows like cracked and crooked teeth, And tread with little care upon the bones Of those who dream of better worlds beneath Grief’s gifts of plastic flowers, faded pale. But youth...

. To Mr. Evan Mantyk, . I know you lead a busy life curating the Society of Classical Poets and I don’t want to waste a bunch of your time with some long-winded missive.  That being said, if you can spare a few moments—can spare a few moments to read...

. Jerzy and Cyla Jerzy, a Polish teen in World War Two, Arrested for suspected membership Of the resistance, faced a one-way trip To Auschwitz. There, where womenfolk were few, Labouring in a storehouse used for grain He witnessed the arrival of a crowd Of girls. One, by extremity uncowed,...

. The Devil’s Trill I.     A heavy meal and three glasses of port Weighed down Tartini when at length he rose From supper to retire. “Ah, there he goes— Tartini, feted at each royal court He visits,” said one of the guests. “Who knows, He may be finished,” came...

. The Dance __'Tis springtime _And air is a-breezin', Wafting through fair winds that blow. __The blossoms _From flowering jasmine Are waltzing along with the flow. __As vines twist _And twine in a tango, A rhumba with bees fills the hive. __The warblers _Sashay in a frenzy--- 'Tis springtime, and...