Poetry - Moss Kingdom

Spider Dream: a Limerick

by M. Gus | June 11, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Humor, Limerick | 0 Comments

I saw a spider fall into my bed right onto the pillow beside my head. Now I'm hunting him, like preachers hunt sin, and dare not sleep till he or I is dead.

Tooth by Rotten Tooth

by M. Gus | February 4, 2019 | Aging, Dream, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Multi-Syllabic Rhyme, Sestet | 0 Comments

Legs stirring before the alarm's tormenting beep, I wake from strange dreams in the autumn of my youth, and choke on broken promises I meant to keep-- a sludge that settles to the bottom with the truth where bottled thoughts belch the foam of cold fermented sleep and...

Ephemera: Beauty Lies

by M. Gus | August 16, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Italian Sonnet, Moss Kingdom, Sonnet | 0 Comments

"It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live." "Beauty is unbearable, drives us...

At Torrey Pines

by M. Gus | April 17, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Quatrains | 0 Comments

A cruel salt wind molests the twisted pine who grovels on his gnarled knees for rain; his futile prayers won't mend his broken spine nor will he stand, as in his dreams, again. The cliffs themselves all crumble in the sea and the tumble-down rocks resent the mocking...

Sunday Morning Lethargy

by M. Gus | September 8, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 1, Terza Rima | 0 Comments

It's Sunday morning; I don't make the bed. Somehow worn from an oversupply of sleep, I feel empty and overfed all at once. Should I eat or should I try a second cup of coffee, or the tea? I am too weary to decide and I tire of this mush of humid luxury. The night held...

All This Juice and All This Joy

by M. Gus | May 8, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Seasons, Summer | 0 Comments

Alive and heavy with health, syrup swells the root, and sun-dappled fields are filled with walking flowers: the blossoms of the body and the promise of fruit. We know, and delight, and dream away the hours; let us have sweet Summer's cream ...

A Child’s Sleep

by M. Gus | July 18, 2018 | Alexandrine, Daughter, Dream, Gus Stevens | 0 Comments

I wonder if the tearful child, not yet perceiving what it means to fall asleep, might believe she dies each night. Afraid to go alone, she chokes on her goodbyes, "Please don't forget me! O please leave the door ajar!" But the swallowing Unknown will not share her...

The Icebox

by M. Gus | June 5, 2018 | Alexandrine, Daughter, Dream, Grief, Gus Stevens, Hexameter | 0 Comments

In my dream, I held too many things in my hands and my fingers grappled and fumbled with the load afraid I'd drop one as I stumbled down the road for I'd balanced several things atop an icebox and my dream-drunk brain was slow, weighted down with sand until I knelt to...

Dream After Making 300 Valentines for Lifelong Aids Alliance: by Amy Doran

by M. Gus | June 10, 2014 | Amy (Doran) Keeney, Dream, Unrhymed Other | 0 Comments

We sat, pasting crows from construction paper waiting for them to come to life. They did come to life, shuddering with breath, flapping cautiously, realizing. Jesus could be a camera watching over us when we're sick with letters sick with names, lying on a hospital...

November by William Cullen Bryant

by M. Gus | September 19, 2016 | Autumn, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun! One mellow smile through the soft vapory air, Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds run, Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare. One smile on the brown hills and naked trees, And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths...

At the Wading Pool

by M. Gus | August 7, 2018 | Alexandrine, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Seasons, Summer | 0 Comments

The wading pool is shrinking with the wasted sun and the yellows of summer drain slowly away exposing red bricks beneath the glittering spray. With cast-off toys and leaves littered about their feet, the bone-soaked nine-year-olds will squeal, crash, and run through...

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket by Leigh Hunt

by M. Gus | June 5, 2016 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, Summer, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too...

Iron Sky

by M. Gus | October 31, 2016 | Autumn, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Quatrains | 0 Comments

With a howl, October's winds shear the fiery hosts of their yellows and reds to leave the branches bare. Then the orphaned leaves are stained, like little brown ghosts, on the sidewalk before they're raised into the air again. A resurrecting tempest—they fall up and...

Easter

by M. Gus | April 14, 2020 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Irregular Rhyme, Quatrains, Seasons, Spring | 0 Comments

I believe in the resurrection. With its birdsong and flowery filigree, springtime is a useful simile, but the meaning moves in only one direction. It is a life that was, and then was not: true flesh with dirt beneath the fingernails, an eye color that history has...

A Closer Kind of Warm: a break-up-with-summer song

by M. Gus | September 1, 2013 | Autumn, Gus Stevens, Quatrains, Seasons, Summer | 0 Comments

The tyrant sun with unforgiving light bends the boys and girls like the August wheat. He makes them strip their clothes and beg for night like mountains made immodest in the heat. Rustling in a windless night, they seethe and sweat in anguish—should they cut their...

August’s End

by M. Gus | August 24, 2017 | Autumn, Gus Stevens, Rhymed Couplets | 0 Comments

The thorn branches are a knot of tangled capillaries. They quarter armies of spiders standing silent and sentinel over the blackest of the blackberries-- the last and heaviest summer sweet before the coming rot. These are the scouts and outriders of the advancing...

Of Edmund and Aslan

by M. Gus | December 11, 2016 | Advent, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet, Winter | 0 Comments

There were a hundred years of snow before the human children came. Years of frost and chain and shadow when nights were long and only flame could keep away the grasping cold. The creatures hoped; but then the boy traded their hopes for promised gold and forfeit life...

A Seduction: in Four Seasons

by M. Gus | July 15, 2016 | Alexandrine, Autumn, Erotic, Gus Stevens, Love, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Winter | 0 Comments

Look my young fool, born with the Spring's first green, our morning is all spent and now the afternoon bleeds red in the west. Will you really be so mean as to ignore the pot you set upon the coals? I want you, and the water will be boiling soon. Come, Fool, with me...

Winter Staves by Rusten Harris

by M. Gus | December 14, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris, Winter | 0 Comments

Is it winter? The trees are waiting to be clothed Arms and branches lifted up to the heavens Staves - ragged upright wooden bones Sup life with a little soil - frozen Limbs clenched through the wind Some lose weight and watch their friends Keep warm through the winter...

The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator by Anne Sexton

by M. Gus | December 20, 2011 | Irregular Rhyme, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

The end of the affair is always death. She’s my workshop. Slippery eye, out of the tribe of myself my breath finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Finger to finger, now she’s mine. She’s not too far. She’s my...

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – by Emily Dickinson

by M. Gus | March 28, 2017 | Grief, Rhymed Couplets, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, go round – A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – Regardless grown, A...

“I will wait for you.”

by M. Gus | April 22, 2011 | The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

This is an amazing performance that articulates a healthy view of singleness in the Christian life. I feel that it is a powerful and much needed corrective to a protestant/evangelical culture that overvalues married life.

The Fickle Devotion of a Saint

by M. Gus | July 17, 2011 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

Holy Sonnet 19 by John Donne Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one: Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot A constant habit; that when I would not I change in vows, and in devotion. As humorous is my contrition As my profane love, and as soon forgot: As riddlingly...

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

by M. Gus | November 9, 2016 | Advent, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all...

Les Bijoux by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Jacques LeClercq)

by M. Gus | February 6, 2017 | Erotic, Love, Quatrains, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Naked was my dark love, and, knowing my heart, Adorned in but her most sonorous gems, Their high pomp decked her with the conquering art Of Moorish slave girls crowned with diadems. Dancing for me with lively, mocking sound, This world of stone and metal, brittle and...

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

by M. Gus | October 13, 2015 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunk-less legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those...

Batter My Heart, Three-person’d God by John Donne

by M. Gus | June 7, 2014 | Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds, Victorian Sonnet | 0 Comments

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to...

Excerpts from ‘The Rubaiyat or Omar Khayyam’ translated by Edward FitzGerald

by M. Gus | November 3, 2016 | Aging, Quatrains, Rubaiyat, The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. [...] With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead, And there of the...

The Author to Her Book by Anne Bradstreet

by M. Gus | November 30, 2016 | The Work of Greater Minds | 0 Comments

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, expos’d to public view, Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened...

Where is the Boy? a Rondel for Stephaun

by M. Gus | March 6, 2016 | Gus Stevens, Rondel, Songs for the Dead | 0 Comments

"Look at the picture. Where is the boy?" "Use your finger, like this, and point right here." Some sounds come out of the scowling man, "We're wasting time. Better to let him enjoy himself, stare at the sun, fondle a toy." "When we talk, it's like he can't even...

You Violated Right-of-way: a rondel about how I hope you die in a fire.

by M. Gus | February 20, 2016 | Gus Stevens, Humor, Rondel | 0 Comments

You violated right-of-way when you cut in front of all of us-- a hundred drivers and a city bus-- to be the first car parked on the freeway. There were a few words I wanted to say but it's Lent and my wife growls when I cuss; you violated right-of-way when you cut in...

Yes, I Was Once Afraid of Bees

by M. Gus | July 14, 2016 | Gus Stevens, Humor, Rondel | 0 Comments

Back when I was afraid of bees with a fear most grave and sober; I would flinch when they'd flyover, would shrink and beg my mother, "Please let me stay inside away from these!" Whining from May to October. Yes, I was once afraid of bees but now I see with eyes more...

How Sweet and Awful is this Place by Isaac Watts, 1707

by M. Gus | Jun 26, 2015 | Hymn, Quintains, The Work of Greater Minds

How sweet and awful* is the place With Christ within the doors, While everlasting love displays The choicest of her stores! Here every bowel of our God With soft compassion rolls; Here peace and pardon bought with blood Is food for dying souls. While all our...

If you believe that deaths do come in threes

by M. Gus | May 27, 2015 | Grief, Gus Stevens, Mom, Songs for the Dead, Sonnet, Terza Rima

If you believe that deaths do come in threes and that we are maskers in some Greek play then I am deathless, immortal to disease. No foe's hand can spill my blood nor make me pay the infinite cost of my one own life; it must be by my hand: no other way. Mother and...

Exerpt from “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins: a poem for Mother’s Day

by M. Gus | May 10, 2015 | Mom, The Work of Greater Minds

I was told that all the firsts would be hard. Today is my first Mother's Day without my mom. Billy Collins, in his poem "The Lanyard," has captured my own feelings better than I could myself. In it he tells how, as a child, he'd thought that giving his mother a...

Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay

by M. Gus | Mar 25, 2015 | Spring, The Work of Greater Minds

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is...

How ill a son returns his mother’s love: a poem on my birthday after realizing she will not call again

by M. Gus | Mar 8, 2015 | Grief, Gus Stevens, Mom, Quatrains, Songs for the Dead

How ill a son returns his mother's love. A mother's love is spendthrift, wasteful, strange-- while his response, at best, is but an echo of that heart. —It will never be a fair exchange.

Deafening Sound and Burning Light

by M. Gus | Feb 16, 2015 | Gus Stevens, Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 2

"Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?" -Isaiah 33:14 He is deafening sound and burning light and this sinner's eyes cannot bear the load; I have feared His wrath and now dread delight for who can love when so much...

Cowper’s Grave by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: a tribute to my mother on the morning after she took her own life.

by M. Gus | Jan 22, 2015 | Grief, Mom, Quatrains, Rhymed Couplets, The Work of Greater Minds

It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying. It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying. Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence, languish. Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish O poets, from...

The Prodigal Sun: a poem about how we love the Sun despite his philandering

by M. Gus | Dec 21, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Terza Rima, Winter

Wandering with careless muddied steps, I squish the gluttonous ground all drunk with rain in this city where the puddles never dry and the leaf-crammed gutters never drain 'cept for a fleeting fist of golden weeks when the sun visits all brilliant and vain. And we,...

Winter Words: a poem about the uselessness of poems

by M. Gus | Dec 15, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet, Winter

What can be offered to the afternoon but words and words; there's nothing new to say and so I'm silent as the winter's moon with her half smile over the brilliant day. The clouds have all been chased off by the sun, her sole companion in an empty sky, and I despoil...

An Apathy: a reflection on joyless bible reading

by M. Gus | Sep 23, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 1, Sonnet, Terza Rima

"Boredom: the desire for desires. " —Leo Tolstoy What is the point of sitting here? I turn the pages chore by chore puzzling as I read, "He's Near!" "He stands beside the open door," it claims, yet I am still a man without a prophet to ignore, without a tribe, without...

Sunday Morning Lethargy

by M. Gus | Sep 8, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 1, Terza Rima

Fathoming the Measure: words about the Grand Canyon

by M. Gus | Aug 20, 2014 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Terza Rima

Yes; I could estimate the grains of sand the Colorado carries year by year carving with his crooked and cursive hand. But such reckoning is but a cashier's math yielding a number I cannot know for in my mind the zeros disappear. Nor can I figure a new fallen snow...

Ephemera: Beauty Lies

by M. Gus | Aug 16, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Italian Sonnet, Moss Kingdom, Sonnet

Mother of the Storm

by M. Gus | Aug 12, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet

What is it about the sea, that heaving mass of endless grey, that stills and saddens me and bends my thoughts like clay? Upon the undulating mass the waves warp and glisten like a field of broken glass and call to all who'd listen, "I am the mother of the storm and...

“I wish I could remember that first day” by Christina Rossetti

by M. Gus | Aug 11, 2014 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, The Work of Greater Minds

I wish I could remember that first day, First hour, first moment of your meeting me, If bright or dim the season, it might be Summer or Winter for aught I can say; So unrecorded did it slip away,...

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