Category: Entertainment
-
The Rings of Venus — from 58 poems written at 29
The Platonists pilfered impossible thoughts From the tiniest things. How the thinkers Mind a mouse or a mellon and dream Distillate dreams that drink of the fountain Of joy and justice that enjambs a row Boat into debates beautiful and sailing Or infers the fern from the foundry’s smelt Singed gold leaf. See me hold The…
-
Small Stories for Kids: SCARY DRESS UP by 8-year-old Harry Neuenschwander
It was a cold night when suddenly Jack heard something. So he went downstairs. “It was coming from the kitchen,” he said as he walked in. Then he screamed and ran out of the kitchen. “Ahhh!” But it was actually his big brother Sam dressing as a ghost. “I just wanted to scare you so…
-
Prog Code — from 58 poems written at 29
From the broken bytes of Bernie’s movement A scrapyard assembled. Seams were bound By unseemly stitches, a scarlet old thread With a green or a gold or a great navy And the parties perished and progress was encoded On the minds of mankind and the matriarchy And they plugged in the power. They primed this…
-
Dark Towers — from 58 poems written at 29
At the end of every alley their stands A timeless tower. Top of the Rock Rises rustic and rearing tomorrow’s Artisan deco amateurs and their visions Of gilded ages. Glimpse it at the end Of an alley or walkway. Empire is there At the end of broadway or as the aim of Macy’s Herald Square.…
-
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love America
Film buffs will know I pulled my title from Dr. Strangelove or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The film is a comedy of errors in which the entire world is summed up in a cowboy who literally cackles and cheers as he rides a nuclear explosive from the heavens down…
-
Communes — from 58 poems written at 29
The phone flings beeps, fingers respond By typing tamely, or the thumbs clanking I love you in animated Golden age .gifs or emojis Like knot-tying nubs that fumble. Half-hitches the harbor uses In the nightly fog. We never meant To replace our prose with power cords Or whisper with widgets. Where did the letters Get…
-
Seven Foods that Saved My Life
Tara and I have pulled one another along in the boldness of various faiths — of the inconveniences, rightly considered — that force us to consider ourselves aright and help me, for one, stand as tall as a man can stand and no taller. Several years ago she asked if we could spend a month eating…
-
Eugene Peterson and His All Out War on the Nonprofit Industrial Complex
Often we hear historians say that the greatest critiques of the church come from the radicals inside her. Eugene Peterson has fit this bill for years, pastoring pastors on how to pastor instead of coddling and enabling them to stay in their addictions to greed and power and graceful lusts and fame. I’m reminded of…
-
Good Criticism is Hard
Recently, I had a conversation with my friend and brother Doug Welch about good criticism. Since the conversation, I’ve been meditating on everything that makes good criticism and deep reflection difficult. Doug always pushes me to think harder, broader, deeper, further — if I’ve ever added anything helpful to the critical and reflective world, the seeds of those contributions were…
-
The Wild West — from 58 poems written at 29
The Wild Wild West is what they call Baltimore’s broken — the battered western End of The East. With Indians murdered, A white western needs rewritten as an Eastern In this city’s sinning. For soon The Black Man is made a modern native And Manifest Destiny masquerades As eminent domain. Even the firemen Ponder the plastic…
-
Locusts — from 58 poems at 29
How did it happen? How did the most Important point and poem of sound In our day indict dapper slices Of itself and shrink slowly to the noice Of phones buzzing? Petty to trade The cuckoo clock or the bells Of the belfry tower at the best hours Of vigils and vespers or the violin…
-
Ash Wednesday — from 58 poems written at 29
It was the palm’s power to pick the one Who would have the honor. Healers and kings And prophets and priests enpalmed like the actors Who ready for the road of red carpet And the fanning of fans’ fingers and extra — EXTRA! — Excerpts from the excess paper Runs The Register or rather The…