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Showing posts with label line breaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label line breaks. Show all posts

Sunday, April 19, 2026

THE POPE IS WEAK ON RHYME

by Michele Worthington


Phonics 1 for Young Catholics


maybe not when he writes in Italian

but when he says to Chicago and New York

I have no fear I will continue to speak out loudly

 promoting dialogue ​and multilateral relationships

 among the states to look for just solutions to problems"

even line breaks do not help.

 

There is no meter, no music, 

no molecules of pleasure

just temptation to take

bread and wine

from churches 

cake and champagne

from tiny yachts.

 

Jesus rhymes with GPS,

but Christ,

that is hard

to slide into a rebuke.

 

Still, when on the papal plane

to Istanbul and Beirut

flying above stolen paradise

above lake shores sacrificed      

Leo says

Too many people are suffering

Too many people are suffering

I do believe he

sees us.



Michele Worthington lives enclosed in urban sprawl in Tucson but escapes to hike the Sonoran desert often and the Adirondacks every summer. Her photography and words have appeared in several online journals and in print in Sandcutters, Anomaly Poetry, and Nature of our Times anthology. She has been a finalist for Arizona Matsuri, Tucson Haiku Hike and Tucson Festival of Books literary awards.

Monday, April 13, 2020

THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

by Harold Oberman

“Radical Approaches to Social Distancing” by Carolita Johnson, The New Yorker, March 22, 2020


X.  April 10, 2020 16,690

Ars Poetica

I feel guilty for writing something beautiful.
I try to tone it down,
Replace the lilt with hard t’s,
Crash consonants like cars,
Try to remember what landscape is, or was
In this still life.
There are few active verbs
On this couch.  No
Sensible line breaks as I go insane
In isolation.
Hiss.
I swear if I ever get to a bar again
I won’t have a pen and I’m going
To touch my face, shake your hand
And share a shot.
Is there deep meaning in that?
Death to metaphors.
“Live your life as if you’re already dead”
Said Charles Wright, quoting Che Guevara
Or a Japanese coin.
As I was, I wish I could.


Harold Oberman is a poet and lawyer writing in Charleston, S.C.  The above is excerpted from a longer work which may, or may not, ever see the light of day.  He has appeared in TheNewVerse.News and The Free State Review.