My soul’s confession knows no ordinary
penance—nor knows, nor feels, another mind
the nebulating sorrows therein maligned—.
I doubt my own can judge the cemetery
of bygone thoughts, dead dreams, and funerary
pathways—twisted in patterns twice entwined
through one and another—lurking behind
my steeple-belled conscience. On the contrary,
sermon is held just out of sight of that
sinister scene. By holy spirits spurred,
and righteous indignations, high exactions,
my preaching psyche’s overzealous word
inflames my anxious system’s charged reactions—
Leave it to the black cat to catch the rat.
Categories:
exactions, anxiety, conflict, corruption, depression,
Form: Italian Sonnet
from "To My Wife":
So love by love we come at last,
As through the exclusions of a rhyme,
Or the exactions of a past,
To the simplicity of time,
The antiquity of grace, where yet
We live in terror and delight
With love as quiet as regret
And love like anger in the night.
----- J. V. Cunningham
We meet infrequently --
sometimes every other week --
because we have in common
a curious thing: we write.
But, more than that, we think.
We feel; we do not judge
for condemnation, but
as a process of selection.
We speak as though
we understand that flash
of insight that can end
our speech in sudden chill
and labored breath --
a sporadic thrill we value
for its rarity when seeing,
or producing, something worthy
but not wordy.
Categories:
exactions, appreciation, art, beauty, creation,
Form: Free verse