Submissions by Baldwin
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
7th Aug 2022 11:32am
7th Aug 2022 11:32am
Wounds at Agincourt
The scars I bear
beneath my sleeves
bespeak of wounds inflicted
on my flesh
so long ago
on Crispin's Day
at Agincourt
within that battle’s fray.
And yet I’ve felt
no pain from them
in all the years since then
despite how deep
those slicings were.
For what they did,
as Harry said they would,
was Gentle me.
beneath my sleeves
bespeak of wounds inflicted
on my flesh
so long ago
on Crispin's Day
at Agincourt
within that battle’s fray.
And yet I’ve felt
no pain from them
in all the years since then
despite how deep
those slicings were.
For what they did,
as Harry said they would,
was Gentle me.
#suffering
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MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
6th Aug 2022 1:50am
6th Aug 2022 1:50am
God and suffering
If God were to inquire of me
what wounds I bear,
what pain I have endured,
It wouldn’t be to see how mine compare
with those his son withstood
or to determine if I possess
some quota that some sadistic
pope or priest
decreed be the necessary price
to move into the bright “up there”.
He’d do so to assess how much
of healing that he needs to bring
unto my soul and flesh.
For god is all compassionate
and wants all of his mortal sons
to have release
from their sad suffering.
what wounds I bear,
what pain I have endured,
It wouldn’t be to see how mine compare
with those his son withstood
or to determine if I possess
some quota that some sadistic
pope or priest
decreed be the necessary price
to move into the bright “up there”.
He’d do so to assess how much
of healing that he needs to bring
unto my soul and flesh.
For god is all compassionate
and wants all of his mortal sons
to have release
from their sad suffering.
#God
348 reads
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EROTIC POEM
Published
5th Aug 2022 3:07pm
5th Aug 2022 3:07pm
An Emulation of Ovid
What a dog you are
to think that you are clever flesh,
incarnate lust,
seduction on a stick,
and so will have your way with me as easily
as a baby’s lulled to sleep with song.
Ha! You fool! For I know something that
you think you’ve kept from me,
snake sly and secreted away.
Oh yes, I know just where
you’ve laid the traps,
the lures, the cunning snares,
you’ve set, intent to thieve
my will, my strength to choose my ways,
and make me lose and loose myself in you.
For I, behind my veil, have spied,...
to think that you are clever flesh,
incarnate lust,
seduction on a stick,
and so will have your way with me as easily
as a baby’s lulled to sleep with song.
Ha! You fool! For I know something that
you think you’ve kept from me,
snake sly and secreted away.
Oh yes, I know just where
you’ve laid the traps,
the lures, the cunning snares,
you’ve set, intent to thieve
my will, my strength to choose my ways,
and make me lose and loose myself in you.
For I, behind my veil, have spied,...
#erotic
322 reads
4 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
4th Aug 2022 5:52pm
4th Aug 2022 5:52pm
I Wonder If
I wonder if I’ll ever write about my piety
and how I feel the Nazarene’s sweet love
envelops me
in such a way
that makes a reader say
what’s rightly not been said
by anyone,
that is,
“Oh look at all the grace
with which his words
about his Lord are laced,
and how he makes us feel
with all, and through,
his use of stirring imagery
the depths of Christ’s devotion
to us men
and all his suffering and pain”.
The answer, if I’m honest with myself,.
is “no”
and that’s...
and how I feel the Nazarene’s sweet love
envelops me
in such a way
that makes a reader say
what’s rightly not been said
by anyone,
that is,
“Oh look at all the grace
with which his words
about his Lord are laced,
and how he makes us feel
with all, and through,
his use of stirring imagery
the depths of Christ’s devotion
to us men
and all his suffering and pain”.
The answer, if I’m honest with myself,.
is “no”
and that’s...
#WritingPoetry
192 reads
0 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
31st Jul 2022 8:50pm
31st Jul 2022 8:50pm
Speaking to Clouds
I’d like to ask
a scudding cloud
to take a message to
his rain-filled mate
to open up
his water gates
and bring relief
to my land’s drought.
But clouds are things
that I should know
are hardly sentient,
let alone
compassionate
So I, unless I’m dumb,
should realize,
that pleading with them’s
utter foolishness
and shows
that I, to think
that clouds will understand
my woes
and answer any of my pleas
to assuage them,
have inexplicably
so...
a scudding cloud
to take a message to
his rain-filled mate
to open up
his water gates
and bring relief
to my land’s drought.
But clouds are things
that I should know
are hardly sentient,
let alone
compassionate
So I, unless I’m dumb,
should realize,
that pleading with them’s
utter foolishness
and shows
that I, to think
that clouds will understand
my woes
and answer any of my pleas
to assuage them,
have inexplicably
so...
#faith
219 reads
2 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
25th Jul 2022 3:11pm
25th Jul 2022 3:11pm
Signs of God
Some men seek compelling signs
that prove with great finality
a good creator god exists.
And in response
old Paley and his followers have said
the fact of all the harmony within the universe
is quite enough to stave off doubts
on his/hers/its reality
But others note, in light of all the chaos
reigning up above
there’s no designing, personable hand
that’s on display
or can be found
behind the glory of the cosmos’ vast array
of planets and of stars.
For nature (which is actually ...
that prove with great finality
a good creator god exists.
And in response
old Paley and his followers have said
the fact of all the harmony within the universe
is quite enough to stave off doubts
on his/hers/its reality
But others note, in light of all the chaos
reigning up above
there’s no designing, personable hand
that’s on display
or can be found
behind the glory of the cosmos’ vast array
of planets and of stars.
For nature (which is actually ...
#God
261 reads
15 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
22nd Jul 2022 1:08pm
22nd Jul 2022 1:08pm
Raising People from the Dead
If you proclaim
that raising people from the dead
reveals the raiser as divine,
then logically
it is the case
that you must also say
unless you are a hypocrite,
Elijah, and Elisha, too
Aesclepius and the Tyana man,
are of this kind
that is, they must be seen
as gods;
for they, just as the Nazarene
was said to do,
brought back from death
some men (and women, too)
who’d breathed their last
and traveled to the land
where no light shines.
So what you fain imply:
that having power over death...
that raising people from the dead
reveals the raiser as divine,
then logically
it is the case
that you must also say
unless you are a hypocrite,
Elijah, and Elisha, too
Aesclepius and the Tyana man,
are of this kind
that is, they must be seen
as gods;
for they, just as the Nazarene
was said to do,
brought back from death
some men (and women, too)
who’d breathed their last
and traveled to the land
where no light shines.
So what you fain imply:
that having power over death...
#God
188 reads
0 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
20th Jul 2022 7:02pm
20th Jul 2022 7:02pm
Some naive writers think
Some naive writers think
with all their might
that for a composition
to be poetry that stirs
a reader’s soul
to fluttered flight
it has to have
within its lines
a regular insistent
scheme of rhymes
and little else.
So what they “know”
that they should do
when aiming to compose
entrancing posey on a page
and to secure
their reputation as
a wordsmith wonderful
is to make sure
no matter what
they stage the endings of
the phrases or the sentences
of their desired oeuvre ...
with all their might
that for a composition
to be poetry that stirs
a reader’s soul
to fluttered flight
it has to have
within its lines
a regular insistent
scheme of rhymes
and little else.
So what they “know”
that they should do
when aiming to compose
entrancing posey on a page
and to secure
their reputation as
a wordsmith wonderful
is to make sure
no matter what
they stage the endings of
the phrases or the sentences
of their desired oeuvre ...
#WritingPoetry
212 reads
3 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
16th Jul 2022 4:58pm
16th Jul 2022 4:58pm
Some (would-be) poets do believe ...
Some (would-be) poets do believe
the way to write effectively
is gushing out upon a page
(and through one’s eyes?)
what’s stirring heatedly
within one’s heart
But like the small untutored child
who bangs away
upon piano keys and thinks
he’s full of musicality
when all that he sounds out
is tumbled and discordant noise,
the poets who disdain
the learning and employment of
the Dance’s necessary steps
for obtaining in one’s work
poetical enchantment and felicity
and hold that it is virtuous...
the way to write effectively
is gushing out upon a page
(and through one’s eyes?)
what’s stirring heatedly
within one’s heart
But like the small untutored child
who bangs away
upon piano keys and thinks
he’s full of musicality
when all that he sounds out
is tumbled and discordant noise,
the poets who disdain
the learning and employment of
the Dance’s necessary steps
for obtaining in one’s work
poetical enchantment and felicity
and hold that it is virtuous...
#WritingPoetry
236 reads
8 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
12th Jul 2022 6:59pm
12th Jul 2022 6:59pm
These are the rough beginnings of my latter days
These are the rough beginnings of my latter days
when eyesight fades and letters blur;
when strength begins, like water on the seer,
to leech away;
when memory becomes a series of lacunae
and names that were once ready on my tongue
are strangers, ghosts,
some haunting foreign words astray,
locked up,
so vague and inaccessible to me.
This is the murky edge of older years
when I increasingly forget why I have come
into a room
and stand all puzzled and beguiled in unfamiliarity,
adrift within a space no longer mine,
when...
when eyesight fades and letters blur;
when strength begins, like water on the seer,
to leech away;
when memory becomes a series of lacunae
and names that were once ready on my tongue
are strangers, ghosts,
some haunting foreign words astray,
locked up,
so vague and inaccessible to me.
This is the murky edge of older years
when I increasingly forget why I have come
into a room
and stand all puzzled and beguiled in unfamiliarity,
adrift within a space no longer mine,
when...
#aging
200 reads
3 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
9th Jul 2022 10:05pm
9th Jul 2022 10:05pm
How should I Pray?
If I’m to pray to God
what are the “shoulds”, the practices,
to which I must be true
if I’m to do so properly?
Should I care
if what I want to say to him
is slurred and in content is
unspecified, a wordless groaning in the air?
Or should I be on point
with speech coherent and precise,
articulate
in my address to him?
And when I send my pleas to him
should I be standing up
as one must be
when one is in the presence of a king,
or sitting down
or set upon my knees
or...
what are the “shoulds”, the practices,
to which I must be true
if I’m to do so properly?
Should I care
if what I want to say to him
is slurred and in content is
unspecified, a wordless groaning in the air?
Or should I be on point
with speech coherent and precise,
articulate
in my address to him?
And when I send my pleas to him
should I be standing up
as one must be
when one is in the presence of a king,
or sitting down
or set upon my knees
or...
#God
440 reads
9 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
7th Jul 2022 1:42pm
7th Jul 2022 1:42pm
Memories of Oxford Things
My memory of Oxford things
is haunting me tonight
These restless, unlaid ghosts
are whispering
of loneliness within the city’s mists
and loveless days,
of pleasured times
placed by my studied selfishness
beyond my grasp,
of possibilities so often never realized
and opportunities misspent,
of how my final Autumn there
became abandonment,
a wound
that even after all the years since then
remains alive, unhealed
within my heart, my soul, my flesh.
is haunting me tonight
These restless, unlaid ghosts
are whispering
of loneliness within the city’s mists
and loveless days,
of pleasured times
placed by my studied selfishness
beyond my grasp,
of possibilities so often never realized
and opportunities misspent,
of how my final Autumn there
became abandonment,
a wound
that even after all the years since then
remains alive, unhealed
within my heart, my soul, my flesh.
#love
147 reads
0 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Baldwin
