Philip Charles Williams
Writer, Painter, Maker.
Blog by Philip Charles Williams
The walls of life are everywhere.
Low and far off in the distance,
And moving fast like a tsunami.
The walls of life are right in front of you,
Packed tightly all around, just out of reach,
Like groping in a dark closet.
The walls of life loom high above you
Like a canyon of buildings,
Narrowing as they str...
We are married to the Earth,
Yet there have been moments
We have taken each other for granted.
Rarely do we talk
About the first time we met.
Our heads nuzzled in deep field grass,
No one around for miles,
Warm hay-scented air wafting
Over hills, and the sense
We could live right there,
Protected in a n...
The Mrs. Astor inspected
The mahogany table,
Stretched to accommodate sixteen,
Hovered over the polished silver
Like a Supreme Commander examining her fleet,
Flatware laid out like the Spanish Armada,
Reflecting the Italian embroidered tablecloth,
Sailing on still white seas.
T...
Near an exit ramp off Route 15
Outside of Emmitsburg, Pennsylvania,
I walked along the shoulder of the highway,
Between the reflectors and the edge of the road,
About four hundred feet from our broken-down Honda Pilot,
Looking up the hill, looking down at the ground,
Looking for somewhere a cab could come...
I found out about the wedding
On Facebook, a month before the birth
Of our second daughter,
Running around,
Getting her nursery together,
Warm nesting resounding deep
In the heart spaces,
Like golden mahogany hues
Descending down my body.
You think you’re ready
With the second one,
But ...
Focusing on a giant green pepper,
Feeling the muscular folds
Rumple into deep green and black channels,
Like the gyrification of an exhausted
And diseased brain.
Texture is the skin of the world and
Our birthright is to feel the history of the earth,
Tactilely reading plutonic rock
With our bare...
About selling
They were never wrong;
The old cognoscenti in sports coats,
Spinning stories, sensuously salacious,
Selling art to suckers
Through their ears.
About people
They were never wrong;
The old guards
Shuffling past the Brueghel,
Listen for hours,
Pained by monologues
Of what people do ...
Nobody knows
Everyone wears the same clothes,
Except for a trendy scarf.
Nobody knows
There are lines of coke beneath the keyboards
And trash cans full of barf.
Nobody knows
This is a dying industry, dying like an old Hollywood starlet,
Dying for decades.
Nobody knows
The art of histrionics
Like media executiv...
Nothing is created.
Not the small beat of first love, not the big bang of your wedding day,
Not the first hour your first daughter was born.
Nothing is destroyed.
Not ideas, not technology,
Not real love that bloomed before your eyes.
Everything is struggle.
Uphill careers, backward relationships,
Rusted-ou...
Why reject the reverence
That makes this day,
This day,
More holy than yesterday or
Tomorrow?
If your birthday is just a number,
Aren’t birthdays mystical as well?
When Pythagoras sat cross-legged
Looking out at the Ionian Sea,
Listening to the inaudible symphony
Of a mathematical universe,
When Cardano ...
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