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About The Nightingale

From a letter from STC to Wordsworth after writing The Nightingale:

In stale blank verse a subject stale
I send per post my Nightingale;
And like an honest bard, dear Wordsworth,
You'll tell me what you think, my Bird's worth.
My own opinion's briefly this--
His bill he opens not amiss;
And when he has sung a stave or so,
His breast, & some small space below,
So throbs & swells, that you might swear
No vulgar music's working there.
So far, so good; but then, 'od rot him!
There's something falls off at his bottom.
Yet, sure, no wonder it should breed,
That my Bird's Tail's a tail indeed
And makes it's own inglorious harmony
Æolio crepitû, non carmine.

poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Gone Are Their Treasures

From which one of your stale placements,
Do you believe you can rate...
My taste for staying updated?

No powdered wigged out judgements,
Of colonialistic restricted mentalists...
On the pursuit of political correctness,
Can exam with blinded minds...
These times that now exist!

Gone are their treasures.
And documented claims made in print!
Pomp and circumstance pulchritudes...
Appear rather silly!
And exposes their foolishness.
With a laughable return of such seriousness.
That should be burned and left in dusting urns!

From which one of your stale placements,
Do you believe you can rate...

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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I Just Want to Say 'Hello' Then Step

You may claim not to know my name.
But I remember,
You're the same 'old' you.
And if our love had remained...
You would take away my memory too.

But I,
Am not...
Gonna play those stale games again!
I just want to say 'hello'
Then step!
I don't want to start,
Anything I'll later regret!

You claim not to be a part,
Of a past that broke your heart!

Well,
I feel the same as you do.
I am not going to bring up,

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Brown Paper Bag

Brown paper bag

Squalid incomplete

slumped to the side of the street

Like unwanted sacks of garbage

She left her track her smell

And like the brown paper bag

She had travelled well

She had a whole world in her head

Her first love

The man she wed

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poem by Yvette Smith
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Serve Fresh Bread Daily (1)

Anointed has a priest to be
Through holy oil the truth to see
Secrets of God they understand
Revealed to them in Jesus’ hand

But some still try to preach of sin
Without God’s Holy Ghost within
Using sweet words none to offend
They’ll only speak of God as friend

A God who’s heart’s so full of peace
His grace and love will never cease
They’ll take great care to choose each word
An angry God is seldom heard

With such stale bread they’ll feed God’s church
No wonder sheep through hunger search
For pastures green, by Jesus led
To a priest not spiritually dead

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poem by Michael P. Johnson
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You Feel a Sense of Worthlessness

If those 'things' did not exist,
Would you still be who you are?
They have given you a sense of status.
And without them,
You feel a sense of worthlessness.
And you have paid a price to have them.
Even when they must be taken away...
They seem to stale with the commonplace of their use.
Taken for granted and has seduced...you,
Into shameless needing!
Like an appendage depended upon.

And you?
You try not to feel lost without them!
But you lay craving their use.
Feeling useless.
You can not do without them.
They are attached like a habit.
Like a muscle flexed.

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Adrift

Tis strange, this recurring
bout of melancholy
renders spirit low
malcontent
far from jolly.
Adrift, adrift, upon.... Sargasso Sea.

Tis strange, this monstrous,
recurring, bout signaling,
momentous melancholy.
Renders suppressed spirit,
low; marginalized malcontent.
Far removed from thoughtless,
singular; jubilant jocular jolly.
Adrift adrift upon an ardent sea.

Conditions of time peace of mind
creative mood must be mystic met.
Stilled turbulent thought untuned.

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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Battle Song

There's havoc on the staircase where the guests come streaming,
Shirt-fronts shining and tiaras gleaming,
Frail folk shuddering and stout folk steaming --
Steaming in the heat of the fray.
Midnight striking and the strife appalling,
Strong men staggering and weak men falling,
And deep in the heart of me a still voice calling:
'Make for the buffet while you may.

'Make for the buffet while you may, poor stranger,
Make for the buffet while you can;
There's hope for the stale there, strength for the frail there,
Drink for the thirsty man.
Thrust through the throng! Be obstreperous and strong!
Fight till your strength is sped.
Fight and prevail; do not falter, do not fail,
Make for the buffet and be fed!

'Make for the buffet and be fed, poor stranger,
Make for the buffet and be strong;

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poem by Patrick Barrington
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Vanitas Vanitatum

How spake of old the Royal Seer?
(His text is one I love to treat on.)
This life of ours he said is sheer
Mataiotes Mataioteton.

O Student of this gilded Book,
Declare, while musing on its pages,
If truer words were ever spoke
By ancient, or by modern sages!

The various authors' names but note,*
French, Spanish, English, Russians, Germans:
And in the volume polyglot,
Sure you may read a hundred sermons!

What histories of life are here,
More wild than all romancers' stories;
What wondrous transformations queer,
What homilies on human glories!

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poem by William Makepeace Thackeray
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Madala Goes By The Orphanage

Unaware of its terror,
And but half aware
Of the world's beauty near her-
Of sunlight on the stones,
And trembling birds in the square,
Lightly went Madala-
A rose blown suddenly
From Spring's gay mouth; part of the Spring was she.
Warmed to her delicate bones,
Cool in its linen her skin,
her hair up-combed and circled,
Lightly she flowered on the sin
And pain of the Spring-struck world.
Down the street went crazy men,
The winter misery of their blood
Budding in new pain
While beggars whined beside her,
While the street's daughters eyed her,--
Poor flowers that kept midsummer
With desperate bloom, and thrust

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poem by Muriel Stuart
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