Nominalism Is A Liquid Kuhi
nominalism is a liquid kuhi by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé solomonic column, white scraped clean of spirals here lies a similar name safe, lamp-lit passage maybe tomorrow, a shine as a flute flourished flushed garlands atop, around us wet down, barley sugar too extravagant with hope? frugal enough […]
My Mother’s Grief
My Mother’s Grief by Richard J, Hobbs Six years have since ensued, And yet the right words Persist to elude. A grim day, hard to fit the mood.. And if I wasn’t slim paid, Her name I’d get tattooed. I know it’s hard not to cry, Or keep emotions subdued I […]
If Truth In Hearts That Perish
If truth in hearts that perish Could move the powers on high, I think the love I bear you Should make you not to die. Sure, sure, if stedfast meaning, If single thought could save, The world might end to-morrow, You should not see the grave. This long and sure-set liking, This boundless will to […]
I Havent Betrayed You My Hometown
I haven’t betrayed you, my hometown by Mirela Sula I’m leaving… My poor shadow remains There, wandering on the streets In the grip of gigantic shades Though sick, I’m leaving Hidden under covered wounds Without medicine I’m leaving… How am I leaving? I still hear earthly songs Following me down the […]
Eclipse Of Love
Eclipse of Love by Tanisha Avarsekar Are those tears or fires in my eyes? Reality is being manifested by the thought I most despise. The day I had hoped would never come is here. Taking away my soul and what I hold most dear. My pride is your dignity, The image […]
Divided Passion
Divided passion by Mirela Sula Push me…. Tell me “How much time do you need to come”? How much time to get to you? One side of me is in denial I feel like a victim of the aggressor Still being held in the wide open? How do I protect myself? How […]
Death039s Claim
Death’s claim by Tanisha Avarsekar When life stops, but time goes on. When you go, but I have to move on. When the world’s successful in tearing us apart. When death comes to claim, what’s been given by the past. Flames in the graveyard burn through the dark… […]
Dear Bhikkhu A Eulogy
dear bhikkhu: a eulogy by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé what will you will to endure, bhikkhu? what will you remember, twenty lake days saffron robe to keep out the cold, keep out the stares keep off the wax moths and blinding light? watering hole no lodging, jeta’s grove like amber […]
As With A Senryu S Hardening Ridge
As with a Senryu’s Hardening Ridge by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé jalousie windows open six months of chill as welcome as five years, seven inflections precise, scaled dots dropping off and the rubbing out of the fire in the hole flailing legs like broken twigs lost torso in grass – […]
A Gogyohka And The Forgotten Panopticon
A Gogyohka and the Forgotten Panopticon by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé There, a quiet remembrance – thin walls, colloquium volte-face, inversions the same mirrored shine and glass so we sleep better slipping naked under sheets roster-retractions and altercations and always inward-looking the way your pulse races up percussive, a […]
A Faded Postcard Is A Tanka Daydream
A Faded Postcard is a Tanka Daydream by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé but of the firewalker of his frame, a rush of flame look at both faces, closed eyes this, what you were born into to grasp, that expectation a forward hesitation – to love only once to endure, outlast […]
The Dead Woman poem – Pablo Neruda
The Dead Woman poem – Pablo Neruda poems | Poetry MonsterIf suddenly you do not exist, if suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living. I do not dare, I do not dare to write it, if you die. I shall go on living. Because where a man has no voice, there, my […]
If Truth in Hearts That Perish poem – A. E. Housman
If Truth in Hearts That Perish poem – A. E. Housman poems | Poetry MonsterIf truth in hearts that perish Could move the powers on high, I think the love I bear you Should make you not to die. Sure, sure, if stedfast meaning, If single thought could save, The world might end to-morrow, You […]
Fragment of a Greek Tragedy poem – A. E. Housman
Fragment of a Greek Tragedy poem – A. E. Housman poems | Poetry MonsterCHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom Whence by what way how purposed art thou come To this well-nightingaled vicinity? My object in inquiring is to know. But if you happen to be deaf and dumb And do not […]
Diffugere Nives poem – A. E. Housman
Diffugere Nives poem – A. E. Housman poems | Poetry MonsterThe snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws And grasses in the mead renew their birth, The river to the river-bed withdraws, And altered is the fashion of the earth. The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear And unapparelled in the woodland […]
Water Strider
Water-Strider by Aaron Baker Though winged, he walks on water. Skates between elements, skitters like thought through the cattails. A snake slips unseen through the underbrush. The forest shifts and sighs, once again won’t speak its secret. Between the trees, my father glides through sunlight, then shadow. Surface tension: the strider rows forward with middle […]
The Infernal Regions
The Infernal Regions by Aaron Baker Relax. No more the thinness of ceremony. Largemouth bass at the bottom of Kapowsin Lake grow still as his thoughts. No swish and silt, no father and flail. And once perfectly still, they grow even stiller. Nothing’s wasted, says the Lord of the Underworld. Stillness is economy, and economy […]
Honeycomb
Honeycomb by Aaron Baker Here is the dream where dust, gathered and blowing over the field, turns suddenly against the wind and moves with the shape of a body. Here the shape of a body forms and reforms as it crosses the sky, and then you hear it, the hum of the swarm, the resurrection […]
Dark Matter
Dark Matter by Aaron Baker We say the heart is sick, meaning something else. But when we say the body is broken, and it is, the poem, like a great engine long given up to the weather, begins to move. Outside, fireweed among the ruins. We’ve known the seed of failure in action, how […]
Wet City Night
Wet City Night by A. S. J. Tessimond Light drunkenly reels into shadow; Blurs, slurs uneasily; Slides off the eyeballs: The segments shatter. Tree-branches cut arc-light in ragged Fluttering wet strips. The cup of the sky-sign is filled too full; It slushes wine over. The street-lamps dance a tarentella And zigzag down the street: They […]
Unlyric Love Song
Unlyric Love Song by A. S. J. Tessimond It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and […]
Tube Station
Tube Station by A. S. J. Tessimond The tube lift mounts, sap in a stem, And blossoms its load, a black, untidy rose. The fountain of the escalator curls at the crest, breaks and scatters A winnow of men, a sickle of dark spray. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links […]
To Be Blind
To Be Blind by A. S. J. Tessimond Is it sounds converging, Sounds nearing, Infringement, impingement, Impact, contact With surfaces of the sounds Or surfaces without the sounds: Diagrams, skeletal, strange? Is it winds curling round invisible corners? Polyphony of perfumes? Antennae discovering an axis, erecting the architecture of a world? Is it orchestration of […]
The Man In The Bowler Hat
The Man In The Bowler Hat by A. S. J. Tessimond I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man: The man who sat on your right in the morning train: The man who looked through like a windowpane: The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting Morning pipe smoke. I […]
the_children_look_at_the_parents.html
The Children Look At The Parents by A. S. J. Tessimond We being so hidden from those who Have quietly borne and fed us, How can we answer civilly Their innocent invitations? How can we say “we see you As but-for-God’s-grace-ourselves, as Our caricatures (we yours), with Time’s telescope between us”? How can we say […]
The British
The British by A. S. J. Tessimond We are a people living in shells and moving Crablike; reticent, awkward, deeply suspicious; Watching the world from a corner of half-closed eyelids, Afraid lest someone show that he hates or loves us, Afraid lest someone weep in the railway train. We are coiled and clenched like a […]
symphony_in_red.html
Symphony In Red by A. S. J. Tessimond Within the church The solemn priests advance, And the sunlight, stained by the heavy windows, Dyes a yet richer red the scarlet banners And the scarlet robes of the young boys that bear them, And the thoughts of one of these are far away, With carmined lips […]
seaport.html
Seaport by A. S. J. Tessimond Green sea-tarnished copper And sea-tarnished gold Of cupolas. Sea-runnelled streets Channelled by salt air That wears the white stone. The sunlight-filled cistern Of a dry-dock. Square shadows. Sun-slatted smoke above meticulous stooping of cranes. Water pressed up by ships’ prows Going, coming. City dust turned Back by the sea-wind’s […]
sea.html
Sea by A. S. J. Tessimond 1 (Windless Summer) Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of fishes. 2 (Winter) Foam-ropes lasso the seal-black shiny rocks, Noosing, slipping and noosing again for ever. 3 (Windy Summer) Over-sea going, under returning, meet And make a wheel, a […]
quickstep.html
Quickstep by A. S. J. Tessimond Acknowledge the drum’s whisper. Yield to its velvet Nudge. Cut a slow air- Curve. Then dip (hip to hip): Sway, swing, pedantically Poise. Now recover, Converting the coda To prelude of sway-swing- Recover. Acknowledge The drum-crack’s alacrity; Acrid exactitude – Catch it, then slacken, Then catch as cat catches […]
polyphony_in_a_cathedral.html
Polyphony In A Cathedral by A. S. J. Tessimond Music curls In the stone shells Of the arches, and rings Their stone bells. Music lips Each cold groove Of parabolas’ laced Warp and woof, And lingers round nodes Of the ribbed roof Chords open Their flowers among The stone flowers; blossom; Stalkless hang. Poetry Monster […]
one_almost_might.html
One Almost Might by A. S. J. Tessimond Wouldn’t you say, Wouldn’t you say: one day, With a little more time or a little more patience, one might Disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight One of the moment’s hundred strands, unfray Beginnings from endings, this from that, survey Say a square inch of the ground […]
nursery_rhyme_for_a_twenty_first_birthday.html
Nursery Rhyme For A Twenty-First Birthday by A. S. J. Tessimond You cannot see the walls that divide your hand From his or hers or mine when you think you touch it. You cannot see the walls because they are glass, And glass is nothing until you try to pass it. Beat on it if […]
not_love_perhaps.html
Not Love Perhaps by A. S. J. Tessimond This is not Love, perhaps, Love that lays down its life, that many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, But something written in lighter ink, said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own. A need, at times, to be together and talk, And then […]
night_piece.html
Night Piece by A. S. J. Tessimond Climb, claim your shelf-room, far Packed from inquisitive moon And cold contagious stars. Lean out, but look no longer, No further, than to stir Night with extended finger. Now fill the box with light, Flood full the shining block, Masonry against night. Let window, curtain, blind Soft-sieve and […]
never.html
Never by A. S. J. Tessimond Suddenly, desperately I thought, “No, never In millions of minutes Can I for one second Calm-leaving my own self Like clothes on a chair-back And quietly opening The door of one house (No, not one of all millions) Of blood, flesh and brain, Climb the nerve-stair and look From […]
music.html
Music by A. S. J. Tessimond This shape without space, This pattern without stuff, This stream without dimension Surrounds us, flows through us, But leaves no mark. This message without meaning, These tears without eyes This laughter without lips Speaks to us but does not Disclose its clue. These waves without sea Surge over us, […]
meeting.html
Meeting by A. S. J. Tessimond Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell, Cats’ meetings are neat, tactual, caressive. Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak. Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge. We then, at first encounter, should be silent; Not court the cortex but the epidermis; Not work from inside […]
last_word_to_childhood.html
Last Word To Childhood by A. S. J. Tessimond Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never Freeze again in a noonday terror. I shall never break, my sinews crumble As God-the-headmaster’s fingers fumble At the other side of unopening […]
june_sick_room.html
June Sick Room by A. S. J. Tessimond The birds’ shrill fluting Beats on the pink blind, Pierces the pink blind At whose edge fumble the sun’s Fingers till one obtrudes And stirs the thick motes. The room is a close box of pink warmth. The minutes click. A man picks across the street With […]