Best Parnassus Poems
I searched in vain for inspiration.
I even climbed the sacred Parnassus
Where all the muses reside.
I danced with them
Engaged in endless discourse.
All in vain.
Then I resigned to my fate.
Oh Pythagoras? How I refused
Ever to believe in your metempsychosis?
Alas that meritocracy should be reborn
Reborn to write again,
Reborn from darkness and void
Reborn to mock myself again.
With a splash of painted words,
Disjointed, without sense.
A sickly morbid earthling
Fed on the slums and dregs of earth,
Pampered on deadly drugs.,
Only to be haunted by a thousand empty dreams.
Now I solely scribble:
A mass of oddly disjointed lines,
Words upon words, a phantasmagoria of nonsense,
While ashes fall upon the yellow pages
Scented with nicotine of stale cigars.
Categories:
parnassus, addiction, writing,
Form:
Free verse
When melancholy drowns my interests,
all seem lost; when black bile's ooze then molests,
I travel through the valley of this death,
lacking life, hope—even desire for breath!
So, myself from blackness I amputate,
spurn whether to self-murder (and brave this fate?);
and lay aside despair and misery,
to fall in love once more with Poetry.
For two loves I have, God and the Muses:
one gives, the other neither refuses.
Before long, the Parnassus heals me in time;
and I grow strong before the end of this rhyme!
For mightier than despair is the Lord,
and the poet whose pen conquers the sword.
Categories:
parnassus, depression, god, hope, inspiration,
Form:
Sonnet
I remember as a young boy
Sitting on top Mount Parnassus
Consumed in writing I enjoyed.
Mostly poetry to express
At the time my innermost thoughts
While below my childhood playmates
Romped and played and most often fought.
And myself trying to translate
Feelings into coherent thought
And writing them down on paper.
I recollect those times that taught
Self- discipline behavior.
Yet if I lived it all again
I would be one of those children.
Categories:
parnassus, childhoodwriting, writing,
Form:
Rhyme
I.
What delight is there, when the wine of youth
runs out and just the dregs of life remain?
When childhood flowers, and love's fire becomes truth,
the lusts of adolescence touch the brain;
when youth is gone, and life's sunsets approach,
the carnal pleasures of one's early years
cease as the winters of old age encroach;
and Cupid's arrow-tipped, twain-feathered spears
no longer fly true—for autumn's reproach
wilts passion like coffins that rest on biers.
II.
With vanished youth ardent love is absent;
yea! true love, as well, is scarce and then gone;
life's spring and passion are together meant,
which is a law of nature's lexicon.
But love desired is a love to acquire;
though plenteous are the fish that fill the sea,
casting nets (for love), like scalding Greek fire,
can burn and hurt the once young and carefree;
sought hastily, love without St. Elmo's Fire
can turn young lovers into a casualty.
III.
Ephemeral is love! The Muse, changeless,
unlike suitors won't dash one's youthful heart.
Her love is permanent; and she, viewless,
will bear one aloft to one's rhyming art.
A higher purpose is the divine Muse,
and no greater love has one known than she;
the bright north star to one's Parnassus, whose
west wind for one blows light and feathery,
she'll inspire and put one to divine use,
an assertion that's no minor decree!
Categories:
parnassus, childhood, desire, love, lust,
Form:
Lyric
Fair Angels of Parnassus, Muses Nine,
That on its snowy summit gay recline
With other gods, are haply the cynosure
Of poets whom inspires your sacred ewer,
O'erflow'd with the ambrosial Hippocrene,
The haunt of daughters of Mnemosyne,
And Father Jove who loves these nymphets most,
And of that gelid crest th’ immortal host.
Apollo, son of Jove, gives company
To your glad song of heaven’s euphony;
There to his lyre flourish unfetter'd throats
That bear the truest art through truest notes.
When sing ye graceful goddesses amidst
The brood of Saturn’s mighty son in feasts,
May gladden the heart of children of the plain
As well who in summer nights hearken you fain.
I heard that music mild betwixt the glades,
‘Twixt valleys old till with the breeze it fades,
Amongst the rustling youthful Aspen leaves,
From bough to bough its tender beauty weaves.
On warbler’s throat ye happy strains do pour,
Above the groves as o’er the mountain soar
They with their pinions unweary and suave,
Dispenser of all art ye fain observe.
4th April, 2017
Categories:
parnassus, angel,
Form:
Classicism
I long for your truant inspiration,
O Muse, for I've felt your absence too long;
empower me to sing a gay, new song,
that with pen I may still bring creation!
Reappear, Muse, to my great elation:
for you can never do me ill or wrong;
arrive! so that my distress won't prolong,
nor shall persist the source of my frustration.
For your return shall cripple disrepair
of my Parnassus, and will have its sway:
so the cease of my creative despair,
like spring that reanimates life everywhere,
will dawn on this most, most auspicious day
when comes alive this sonnet through this way!
Categories:
parnassus, creation, inspiration, life, muse,
Form:
Italian Sonnet
LOVE FOR THREE WOMEN
In bays and headlands of my dreams I hear her sweet laughter:
She strolls along the beach in morningtimes at low tide bright.
O, like an unworn dress for a feast unknown hereafter,
My daughter and my better, guide and guard her out of sight.
Similar but different. Passionate. Lover and friend.
My wife’s yesterday-tastes are mine - lovebird pigeons homing,
Looking in one direction, the calculable next bend,
Bound together through yellow woods in the evening gloaming.
Grey haired, she lives forever younger in my memory.
With music, learning, poetry she set my mind ablaze:
From high Parnassus, future seeds fed by roots of hist’ry.
Mirrored in my soul, mother’s eyes return my searching gaze.
These three beloved women through my heart and spirit roam:
May love for them give strength and comfort on their journey home.
.........................................................................................................
Written by Sydney Peck, 12 June 2011 for
Francine Roberts' Contest "Sonnets, Sonnets, everywhere!"
Categories:
parnassus, love
Form:
Sonnet
Where art thou, Muse? I seek inspiration!
I have endured your absence for too long:
restore to me the gift of creation
once more, that I may sing a new, gay song.
When you return I'll feel great elation,
for as my muse you can never do wrong
or cause the source of my dislocation;
when you arrive my distress won't prolong.
As afflatus returns, this disrepair
of Parnassus will lose its unsure sway,
and the decrease of my written despair
shall blossom on this particular day,
like the Flower that's both lovely and fair
as this fresh sonnet lives and has its way.
09 December 2019
Categories:
parnassus, creation, inspiration, metaphor, muse,
Form:
Sonnet
None can share in full the loss You have known;
from innocence to experience, You,
fair child, were never meant to be alone;
to be betrayed by saints who were untrue;
to know the sting of isolation's power,
or feel the bitterness of love denied:
how heaven could have known (that on the hour
of your birth) Fortune lost her happy stride?
But be not dismayed! For Pieria
is your commiseration, and relief,
your solace, and your true Arcadia;
in it let your heart become glad as lief.
Tho' fortune, fame, love, friends, and bliss decline,
Parnassus is your finer eglantine.
Categories:
parnassus, destiny, fate, heart, introspection,
Form:
Sonnet
I long for thy truant inspiration,
O Muse! (I feel thine absence for too long.).
Restore to me the gift of creation
once more,—that I may sing a new, gay song.
Reappear soon to my great elation,
O Muse! For thou canst never do me wrong,
or be the cause of my dislocation:
upon thy return my distress won't prolong.
On thine arrival, this crippling disrepair
of my Parnassus shall give up its sway,
and the end of my creative despair
will arrive on this most auspicious day
(like spring that welcomes existence everywhere),
when this new sonnet comes to life this way.
Categories:
parnassus, creation, inspiration, longing, loss,
Form:
Sonnet
To Lesley do I owe a big debt
No more over verse will I ever sweat
Reading her nuanced advice between the lines
My motivation to versify sharply declines
It has become clear to me that my rotten rhyme
Is so very close to being a humanitarian crime.
So,Ms Duncan,to you must I convey my thanks
That no longer will I invest in poetry banks.
Now must I banish my obsession with a final farewell
And consign all future thoughts of poetry to the fires of hell.
Without me,may all you genuine poets flourish
And your love of poetry always and ever nourish.
With a truly sad heart I do lay down my pen
And I will not demean Parnassus ever again
And yet who can ever be fully sure and rightly know
When the Pierian spring through one will once again flow?
Categories:
parnassus, lost love, poems, sad,
Form:
Rhyme
Erotic Errata
by Michael R. Burch
I didn’t mean to love you; if I did,
it came unbid-
en, and should’ve remained hid-
den!
***
Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch
Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.
***
Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch
Show me your most intimate items of apparel;
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip ...
***
Warming Her Pearls
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Warming her pearls,
her breasts gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund ...
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.
***
Cover Girl
by Michael R. Burch
Cunning
at sunning
and dunning,
the stunning
young woman’s in the running
to be found nude on the cover
of some patronizing lover.
In this case the cover is a bed cover, where the enterprising young mistress is about to be covered herself.
***
First Base Freeze
by Michael R. Burch
I find your love unappealing
(no, make that appalling)
because you prefer kissing
then stalling.
***
Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch
for and after Richard Thomas Moore
Abbesses’
recesses
are not for excesses!
***
Less Heroic Couplets: Sex Hex
by Michael R. Burch
for and after Richard Thomas Moore
Love’s full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes).
Published by *Asses of Parnassus, Lighten Up Online* and *Poem Today*
***
Retro
by Michael R. Burch
Now, once again,
love’s a redundant pleasure,
as we laugh
at my childish fumblings
through the acres of your dress,
past your wily-wired brassiere,
through your panties’ pink billows
of thrill-piqued frills ...
Till I lay once again—panting redfaced
at your gayest lack of resistance,
and, later, at your milktongued
mewlings in the dark ...
When you were virginal,
sweet as eucalyptus,
we did not understand
the miracle of repentance,
and I took for granted
your obsessive distance ...
But now I am happily unbuttoning
that chaste dress,
unhitching that firm-latched bra,
tugging at those parachute-like panties—
the ones you would have gladly forgotten
had I not bought them in this year’s size.
Originally published by Erosha
Categories:
parnassus, crush, desire, funny love,
Form:
Rhyme
Litter London with latent suicidal tongues
Olympian words rise to claim the covet of crown
National pride perhaps, to hear the dialect sings
Diminished not again by that foreign fang of words
Once strangling memory of native speech.
Nation language everywhere now dancing
Poetry can speak in any voice the same
Opening of the mind tumult unsubdued
Every babel there babbling, but I barred
Trampled into silence by the clever clique's
Resume required to select me as inspired.
Yet I yearn to yell the discontents of my hell.
O tell me what pious praise eater will yell
London till bridge and children shouting falls
Yearning the fire would not cleanse the ring
My message is too shoddy to be a lie
Polished phonemes on fantastic stages flutter
Images stuttering history for the apron and rag
Consuming our childhood and our manhood now
Sort of things I am too ignored to say or tell.
....
The naked bird flocking itself with feathers
Will not whistle my name
When they all for their Parnassus gathers
I have no ascribed fame
Of making colonials shudder in shared relief
That it will go away, because benign a grief
Is spilled upon paper, or on bleached of tongue
London Olympics is now the sudden tree
Where syllables on on invisible crosses strung
Anesthetize the recovery of dread Calvary
Categories:
parnassus, political, me,
Form:
Free verse
O Cinna man,where you gonna run to?
O Cinna man,where are you gonna hide?
What's with poetry which makes us all blue?
Your verses we can no longer abide
Most of us labour on the foothills of Parnassus
Being no more than dross among the gold
We are but pygmies beside any Colossus
Yet we want our poems to applause unfold
Our thirst we cannot slake from the Pierian spring
Our dryness burns deep into every scroll
'Tis no wonder that our poetry does not sing.
Why do we bother our heads to write at all?
It must grieve the bounteous Muses
Who long to hear the song of songs
Their gifts they do not refuse us
So why do we so often get it wrong?
Categories:
parnassus, poetry, poets, writing,
Form:
Rhyme
I.
Like arrows swiftly launched on bleeding wings,
space and time flew to shape our foretold fates.
Parnassus glorified supernatural beings,
birthing grand songs too vast to narrate.
From Pierian springs, I drank like deer that pants,
hoping the Muses touch and Apollo grants,
that I might drive his chariot of fire,
and sing legends with bold, poetic lyre.
II.
With rhymes aflame, I chased the godly heights
like Icarus, and dared the sunlit span;
but sung too high, and flame consumed the flights:
rebuked, I fell, a humbled mortal man.
Yet oaths unbroken drew me back once more,
to shape new songs upon death’s shadowed shore.
Like specters hearing God’s faint whispered breath,
I raced toward hope—and sang myself from death.
III.
Then came my Rose, a muse with goddess hand,
whose wisdom opened realms unknown before;
Athena-like, she begged my soul expand,
and led me through imagination’s door.
With her, I reached a place where words fell short,
where blooming visions pierced the soul’s report.
Through her bright eyes, I found new worlds to write,
and traced the lines of undiscovered light.
IV.
At times, dark melancholy gripped my soul,
and brooding moods eclipsed my poet’s spark;
yet spirit triumphed, rising so ever whole,
drawn upward by the word’s resplendent mark.
O, joys of rhyme, the pulse of written art,
do lift the weary and set the broken heart!
Like soaring angels winging through the blue,
poetry healed, and saved, making life as new.
V.
If beauty sowed truth, then poetry reaped truth.
For truth, in turn, was beauty shaped in song.
These verses, born of joy and pain and youth,
called from the soul where dreams and hopes may throng,
so with each line our heart’s true pulse was caught,
and through each word, the soul’s deep lessons taught.
If our hearts judged, then eyes of fire would see:
poetry spoke truth, and truth, poetry!
Categories:
parnassus, beauty, death, fate, fire,
Form:
Ode