Long Tolstoy Poems

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
–“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” by W.B. Yeats 

“I love you...

Read More

War and Peace: That Midst Nations And Nationals

War and Peace, a classical fiction by Leo Tolstoy, first published as Voyna I Mir in 1865–69. This picturesque reflection of early 19th-century Russian culture saw as its...

Read More

In It,  I Saw Prometheus Chained And Bound


I was reading Salinger's, "Catcher In The Rye" 
A follow up from Leo Tolsty's,  "War and Peace"
I heard a voice say, "seek wisdom before you die"
Remember...

Read More

Black lives matter. Me too.
Not my president. Give peace a chance.
Luck runs out. I like immigrants. 
Power must be challenged by power. 

Equal and opposite reactions.
God is the answer. Love is the answer.
Walk on the...

Read More

Only so pleased by sacrifice
Proffered through sacred flame,
Graceful gods do give gifts of choice
So deserved by unselfish aim;
He that eats fruits by them bestowed,
And gives not so in turn,
Who gets, not so does earn,
A thief...

Read More

Why do I love poetry? Well, it's none of the usual: beautiful words, lofty thoughts, noble sentiments. I can get all that from Tolstoy or the Bible. No, I love poetry, good poetry, because it...

Read More

Meeting a princess

It was, according to the old, the coldest winter
any could remember, the wise said it was because 
the war had disturbed the weather pattern
One day, it snowed, then it got mild, after that...

Read More

My Christmas Box by Rob Barratt

We’ll have an X-Men, X-files, X-Box, no socks, X-Factor, Max Factor, Max Bygraves, no war 
graves of a Christmas

I want empathy, an MP3, a hemp-free, hump-free, grump-free,  Humperdink, have-a...

Read More

That's it
I'm moving to Russia
to write with the kings
Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
to sit in the cafes
and watch the pretty blond
Russik girls
Cook hot in winter
and get kicked out for talking too much
and knowing too much
and loving too...

Read More

Some students with a tanned skin tone
have decided they should bitch and moan,
over the fact they were made to read
the greatest writers in history.
It wasn’t the content they attacked,
instead it was that the writers lack
the...

Read More

Homer, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Goethe, and Crane;
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Whitman, and Twain;
Whose imagination and toil helped to unfold
Stories, philosophies, and lessons to be told.

The inquisitive student absorbed in his books,
Contemplating and learning while everyone...

Read More

I'm Just Getting Started

I'm just getting started, though I'm not in control,
But I am all dressed and indubitably, very well-composed,
virtuously loved by many, with honored adulation exposed,
so I lie and wait, but ready to go,...

Read More

(In 1807, Beethoven wrote a piano/violin
piece with this title.  Count Leo Tolstoy
followed in 1890, with a short novel of the
same name, in which he argued that
matrimony can never work.)

What is a marriage? A fusion,...

Read More

I am waiting in line at a coffee shop when I feel a vibration in my pocket. It captures me, and my hand shoots down, like a slug out of a twelve gauge, instinctively. When...

Read More

The Library (Words to the Wise)


Shhhhh!  No talking strictly enforced!
Most folks abide, except children, of course
And those who can’t read, don’t care, or don’t want
Goof off in the corners, or sneeze
As sharp, darting eyes...

Read More

This farmer’s porch wraps up the house,
pitching shade along all four sides,
with simple posts and long, flat spans,
and pressure-treated floor-boards, wide.

My wife may have gotten closets,
decorated the inside space,
but this long porch is my retreat,
I’m...

Read More

Oh, I Love Poets …
Here is Why:  Explore-It …

I Love The Way We Speak
I Love The Way We Think
And Seek and Link and When On The Brink
Of The Flow of Life … The Way...

Read More

Not one to smile when you are blue
Or welcome storm that sparks your fears
But every time I’m there for you
I find God’s promise in your tears.

At times though tears flow strong and fast
And feelings nosedive...

Read More

Hafez and I grew up together
in Shiraz, centuries apart with
similar poetic ether.
Wandering the world together
as if from the same mother.
We were never actually together
the word reincarnated is better.
He lives in me and we suffer together
humanity's...

Read More

Pick a book I'll read it
Any one will do
I always want to have something
That I can do with you

Montgomery, Smith, and Tolstoy
Weren't too complex
But didn't you say Shakespeare,
Was who you wanted next?

How'd you do on...

Read More

Open eyes to bright sunshine 
This feels like the first day 
Can't imagine what went before
Like a scene from an Ibsen play

The thought of you a lightning bolt
The kind that hits you twice
You are the...

Read More

Alexandra Tolstoy, lost it all, the bamks just
Threw her to the wall, held her funds
Locked her out, her fault? 
Her Russian husbannd no doubt.!
Although he'd left for many years she took
The hit, expetienced fear; according...

Read More

“Art is the medium by which a person, having experienced an emotion, intentionally transmits it to others” – Leo Tolstoy

A bleak monotonous landscape,
Had been her outlook for years.
She so vehemently longed to escape.
The young woman...

Read More

He called them the great men
Thoreau, Goethe, Emerson, Tolstoy
Yet even as a child, I discovered Wyeth's greatness
“Christina’s World” called to me
fascinated child, as mama shopped
Christina’s painting intrigued me for hours

Blind neighbor, his inspiration
Christina was lying...

Read More

i wash away the harmony
caught up in your grip
thirsty for a century
Freud told me id slip
house of empty bottles
mirrors obsolete
peers often meet
while Jekyll starts to sleep
cant bare to train my iris
a different strain of virus
a...

Read More