Lyrical Lament: A Poetry Blog

For Msgr. Joseph P. Lehman Ave maris stella we sang in the night the night of the day we learned of your death Hail Mary, star of the...

I want to subtract myself from the world whittle myself down to bones and silence not a diminishment, exactly but a sloughing away a...

Feeble and sickly late November sun glazes Midwestern bone bareness severe skeletons of oak the world cracked shut opaque skies, broken...

Because we are good and have always done what we are told we awaken diligently to our morning labor dutifully we accomplish tasks we do...

It takes one word, one gesture a dove unloosed from your lips your palm to journey inches to cradle my aching fingers, trace my hips ...

Trees scald sharp skies blunt blue with the ruthless unbending straightness of their trunks Nothing churns the stomach like damp, twisted...

After George Santayana’s “Cape Cod” The lavender waves and the rose skyline Blur at morning’s birth, doused in foamy wine Where will the...

For me, it is the minor key perhaps solitary cello, hollowed by grief an oboe’s piercing candor, sorrow’s thief echoing my heart’s...

At its essence all death is as raw and fragile tragic as this one: the infant chick, a golden cream yellow few days hatched fresh from...

For my sigh of exasperation for the harshness of my glance the raised and rigid voice end-of-evening, red-wine-fueled impatience for the...

Like watching a car crash steel crushing steel, shrieking metal some freak tragedy a tornado— its wailing cylinder of madness scorches...

It’s the honeysuckle’s last days when her gaping white mouth fades yellow and brown and her lewd pungency sharpens like a perfumed widow...

In youth when the sickness took hold of me it flattened my soul drained my bones pulverized them to grey dust gnawed my heart with its...

The three that have followed me all my life— love that haunts me fear that stalks me and shame— shame that sits waiting brooding in the...

“The seed of generation, driven to perfect itself, driving deep into the woman’s body, driving to bring the future into being.” - J.M....

Today I feel generic, replaceable as Tupperware. My lofty ideals, values altruism have given way to a reality of windowless office...

For decades we lived in your world slight, timid creatures scampering about your roots darting up and down your trunk hopping skittishly...

Our love seems to live outside us beyond us it lives freely in the world amassing in cloud in that cinereal terrain of temper and terror...

Ephemeral as a dream wildflowers braided in wisps of hair like tenderness and jealousy, intertwining queen anne’s lace capricious...

The poignant sky weeps with me today in solidarity my fluorescent-lighted sorrow staggers through forests of bones of my jagged mind ...