Philip Charles Williams
Writer, Painter, Maker.
Blog by Philip Charles Williams
Dark days descend
When black humors ink the void,
Like a giant squid groping
In the cold, silent depths.
You feel the pressure everywhere
Like an entire city block on your back,
Can’t see an inch in front of your face
Without feeling your eyeballs squeezed down like olives.
Can’t think except for the ...
You don’t need art
In the middle of a dream,
Waking up cheek to cheek
With your sleeping daughter
Who climbed into bed, frightened
With dreams of her own.
You need art
For the month after your father dies
When everything before you is
Like driving in a snowstorm at night.
You don’t need art
In the middle of ma...
Confronting my father’s body
In exquisite silence, alone in the vast emptiness
Of a small room in the funeral home.
His rigid body, his eyes
Diminished, sunken, closed
Tight like the fists of a child.
His feet were exposed and cold
Outside of the blanket
Covering his body.
I spoke, no...
I
There we were, the two of us
Free again like first semester freshman year,
Free in the city, free
For the weekend, free from our lives.
With the city open,
With its constellation of lights,
The Boston skyline beckoned, in the air
Briny waves of beer, seafood, seagulls, and the sorrowful joys of grad...
Like a thug Irish street gang,
Beat up, mangy, and gnarled.
Crowded together as if for a mug shot,
The large one, the muscle, crusted over,
Put through the wringer,
Next to him was the big guy’s best friend,
Mastermind of the whole outfit,
Long, skinny, and balding
Hairs ingrown,
Then there was Roast-B...
The ghosts of our fathers shall never leave us.
They hover over our lives
Like Ra over the Temple at Heliopolis.
Concentric rings from
Whiskey shot glasses
Stain our memory.
Punishments roil within,
Rage of the hand, capricious rage
That off-centered expectation of the real.
Sphynx silence,
...
Walking around,
You can’t help learning about longing
For an ordered world, gleaming from a manicured lawn.
How care comes from Chrysthaneumums
Planted tenderly in rings
Around a mailbox.
How the mezuzah on the doorframe
And the quiet outside 2B on a Friday evening,
Is a holy quiet.
How a wild, untamed front...
Cheek to cheek in loving clique,
Warm blanket of security,
The perfect sleep with dreams down deep
And fears faded into obscurity.
Loving girl, skin of pearl
Whose beauty and kindness are one,
The hair in curls, the skirt that twirls
And a mind shining like the sun.
Hair in the wind, legs that are thin
Like ...
In the Human Core,
Grievances wash up
Along resentment’s shore.
As we hold onto grudges
Like seashells we adore.
Buried, buried deep
In the Human Core,
Language’s lattice bears fruit
In the mind’s pergola’s sweet-scented store.
As we pick the ripe analogies,
And bite into the juicy me...
Round and red and full of dread,
Fearful fruit ripe to be bled,
They say beauty hides goodness within
But I simply do not believe them.
Sunlight glistens red orbs on the vine,
Some pop cherries in their mouth and call it divine.
I shudder at the thought and admire them from afar,
The idea of eating one who...
Categories
- General
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- The City
(7)
- The Country
(1)
- The Frontier
(5)