Submissions by Baldwin
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
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
257 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
305 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
230 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
254 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
274 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
254 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
513 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
189 reads
0 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
25th Jun 2022 4:31pm
25th Jun 2022 4:31pm
Why Joseph Doesn't Write Arthurania
Where are your lilting words
set out within compelling verse
so literate and grammar graced
they’d teach me through example how
to bring alive before a reader’s eyes
the gloried acts of chivalry,
that were the essence of
the “one brief shining moment”
forged by the bearer of Excalibur
until the savaged darkness fell
because of Medraut’s treachery
and Guinevere's adultery
upon the time in Albion
that’s known to all as Arthur’s age
They are not anywhere
upon a page
or on a screen
no doubt because ...
set out within compelling verse
so literate and grammar graced
they’d teach me through example how
to bring alive before a reader’s eyes
the gloried acts of chivalry,
that were the essence of
the “one brief shining moment”
forged by the bearer of Excalibur
until the savaged darkness fell
because of Medraut’s treachery
and Guinevere's adultery
upon the time in Albion
that’s known to all as Arthur’s age
They are not anywhere
upon a page
or on a screen
no doubt because ...
#WritingPoetry
220 reads
6 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
16th Jun 2022 1:54pm
16th Jun 2022 1:54pm
Retort
Old Joseph-Z
has charged me with
indecency
because I dared to wondered if
the denizens of Camelot
were who he knew
without familiarity with sources that
are ancient
and thought primary
like those of Nennius and Gildas and
the Historia Brittonum or then
the Annales Cambriae,
poetic sources, too,
like triads Welsh
and then Y Gododdin
in which the legends grew
they had to be.
He does not know
that I am not alone in doing so.
In century 18th
the writer Thomas Percy...
has charged me with
indecency
because I dared to wondered if
the denizens of Camelot
were who he knew
without familiarity with sources that
are ancient
and thought primary
like those of Nennius and Gildas and
the Historia Brittonum or then
the Annales Cambriae,
poetic sources, too,
like triads Welsh
and then Y Gododdin
in which the legends grew
they had to be.
He does not know
that I am not alone in doing so.
In century 18th
the writer Thomas Percy...
#WritingPoetry
285 reads
9 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
15th Jun 2022 2:16pm
15th Jun 2022 2:16pm
Tales of Camelot
Oh do not look too closely at the tales
of Camelot.
Allow the mists of time
to polish what we think we know.
It may well be, in truth,
that Arthur was a thieving brute
and Guinivere his whore;
the table but a circus show
and Lancelot a bore.
of Camelot.
Allow the mists of time
to polish what we think we know.
It may well be, in truth,
that Arthur was a thieving brute
and Guinivere his whore;
the table but a circus show
and Lancelot a bore.
#mythology
407 reads
16 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
12th Jun 2022 2:41pm
12th Jun 2022 2:41pm
To Follow You
I should like, I know,
to follow you
up a long stairway
to note
just how your hips
sway
liquid, liquid;
to see how they would pendulum the air
and lay
upon it motions
with a rare design
that I would not forget,
and find out how my heart
might rhyme its beats
within the rhythm of your rising step --
the rhythm
that I shall try some way,
try yet,
to make a poem of.
to follow you
up a long stairway
to note
just how your hips
sway
liquid, liquid;
to see how they would pendulum the air
and lay
upon it motions
with a rare design
that I would not forget,
and find out how my heart
might rhyme its beats
within the rhythm of your rising step --
the rhythm
that I shall try some way,
try yet,
to make a poem of.
#lust
341 reads
4 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Baldwin
