Don’t scan your horoscope today
to find out what the stars may say
about tomorrow, or if you’ll see
the lilacs bloom again, that tree
bud, flare, and fade, the sun decline
into its winter’s mortal shine:
what lies ahead is still a blur,
though what’s to come is all too sure.
The vanished years recede so fast,
and any smile may be our last:
we’re not designed to glimpse our end;
just take what good the gods may send.
This is all we need to know:
we’ve got today: don’t let it go.
---------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2026 by Jon Corelis
May 23
May 23, 2026 at 5:29 PM UTC
*** this, chat,
IMHO.
OTOH, YMMV.
AITA?
FAFO, LOL!
GTG, TTYL.
--------------------------------------------------
May 22
May 22, 2026 at 11:18 AM UTC
By splitting the atom, we have ****** our matter
and robbed the sun of its Promethean fire.
God help us, we are gods, and in these latter
days we'll manufacture wombs for hire
and generate a species by design
in our own image, to satisfy the whole
world's market for a race that seems more fine,
-- but can we give commodities a soul?
And further yet: our ending is to make
a blind, all-seeing universal mind
which of its own volition will remake
us into creatures of a different kind.
We never could resist such fatal magic,
for what are human beings if not tragic?
Apr 15
Apr 15, 2026 at 12:13 PM UTC
You’ve seen yourselves how he went from here,
no friend as guide, but showing us all
where we had to go. When he’d reached the sheerly
plunging Verge rooted to earth
by its Steps of Bronze, he paused at a place
in the branching ways where the Basin of Rock
still testifies to the deathless trust
King Theseus placed in Perithous,
and, poised at a point equidistant from there
and the Crag of Dawn and the Maiden’s Tree
and the Marble Tomb, he took his stand,
and stripping off his ragged clothes
he called to his daughters and told them to find
some running stream for water to wash
and offer the gods, and they ran to the Mound
of Green Mother Earth, which lies close by,
and brought down what their father had asked,
and they washed his body and wrapped him in white
like you do when it comes; and when he was sure
it was all done right and that none of the things
he had meant to arrange had been left undone,
then a rumbling thunder roared underground
from the Zeus of the Dead, and the terrified girls
fell at their father’s knees with a scream,
beating their ******* with long drawn moans,
and he, at the sound of their keening lament,
gathered them into his arms and said,
“Today forever your father is gone.
All that I am dissolves: lay down
the heavy load of sustaining my life.
I know it was hard, but a single word
cancels the pain: that word is love.
No man’s was ever like mine for you.
Without me now let your lives unfold.”
Clinging together with words like these,
father and children became one torrent
of tears, but when, exhausting their grief,
there was nothing more left, a silence prevailed,
but was shattered then by a summoning voice
so dreadful it stood our hair on end;
from everywhere echoed the call of the god:
“You there, Oedipus, what are you waiting for?
It is time to go. You’re making us late.”
And he, recognizing the voice of the god,
groped for Lord Theseus, King of this land,
to come near, and told him, “Dearest of friends,
give me the pledge of your hand for my daughters,
and you, children, for him. Promise
not to desert them; be their protector;
act in their interest; always be kind.”
And the King, with the calm of noble restraint,
accepted the oath this stranger imposed.
When all this was done, Oedipus then,
stroking his daughters with his blind hands,
said, “Children, your duty is now to leave
this place, not claiming the right to see
or hear what the god forbids. Go quickly:
Theseus alone has the right to stay
to witness what now must happen at last.”
All of us there could hear what he said,
and helpless with weeping we followed the girls.
After we’d gone a short way, we turned
and found he was gone: the King was alone,
holding his hand as a shield for his eyes,
as if he looked on a terror beyond
the painfulness human sight could endure;
and after a moment of stillness, he bowed
in reverence both to the earth and the sky.
As for Oedipus, no one but Theseus knows
exactly how he passed from this world.
No thunderbolt struck him, no storm of the sea,
when his time had arrived, but some messenger
must have come from the gods above, or the underworld
below may have opened a painless way out
with mercy at last. Whatever it was,
there was nothing unclean in his passing. If ever
a man had a wonderful death, it was his.
And if anyone thinks I’m not talking sense,
I can only say, you can have your sense.
Mar 3
Mar 3, 2026 at 11:54 AM UTC
And therefore, whensoever death shall close my eyes,
I charge you thus to solemnize my doom:
let there be then no long ancestral parade of masks,
nor empty cry of trumpet for my end,
nor spread me a catafalque inlaid with ivory,
nor lay my corpse out on a cloth-of-gold;
no ranks of acolytes with incense heaped on trays:
the plain last rites of a common man be mine.
Grand enough my cortege, if it bears a few slim books,
my ultimate offering to Persephone.
But you, your naked breast all torn, shall follow after,
nor ever weary of calling out my name,
and press your final kisses upon my frigid lips,
while Syrian unguent pours from the onyx jar.
Then last, when the fire kindled beneath has burned me to ash,
consign my relics to a fragile urn,
and plant a laurel spreading over my simple tomb,
to shade the burnt-out cinders of my pyre,
and write: HERE LIES A MOUND OF COARSE, IGNOBLE DUST,
THAT ONCE WAS VASSAL TO A SINGLE LOVE.
My sepulcher shall then achieve no less renown
than has the Phthian hero’s bloodstained tomb.
You also, when your fate draws near, remember me,
and come white-haired to these memorial stones;
meanwhile, have care lest you be faithless to my grave:
this earth will not be wholly dead to truth.
If only in my cradle one of the Sisters Three
had ruled that then I should yield up my soul!
What use to cherish so life’s too precarious breath?
Seek Nestor, who lived three long ages: dust.
Yet if his doom of lingering age had been revoked
on Ilium’s rampart by some Carian’s spear,
he never would have seen Antilochus’s corpse entombed,
nor cried, “O death! Why come to me so late?”
Yet you sometimes shall mourn the lover you have lost:
love lasting is the meed of vanished men;
as, when the savage boar smote delicate Adonis
while hunting once, high on Idalium’s crown,
they say that in those marshes his beauty was laid low,
and that you, Venus, came with loosened hair;
but Cynthia, vainly you will summon back my ghost:
what answer could my crumbled bones return?
— translated from the Latin
Feb 26
Feb 26, 2026 at 12:25 PM UTC
..
Note: "The Archpoet" was the pseudonym of a 12th century poet about whom nothing is known except for what he reveals in his poems. He is considered the best secular Latin poet of the High Middle Ages. He presents himself as a member of a group known as the Wandering Scholars or Goliards, a sort of subculture of eternal students who spent their time travelling from one university to another while paying more attention to wine, women, and song than to their studies. Some scholars, however, believe the poet who wrote under this name was actually a well educated nobleman who adopted the poetic persona of a Goliard. My poem is an adaptation rather than a translation, though it attempts to reproduce in contemporary English the meter and rhyme scheme of the original, and follows fairly closely the imagery of selected stanzas from it.
..
Seething over inwardly
with savage indignation,
in my bitterness of soul
I make this declaration.
My substance is an element
refined of all pretension,
a plaything for the fluttering breeze,
a gossamer invention.
..
You’ll find among the good advice
with which The Bible’s filled,
to dig right down to solid rock
before you start to build.
That sounds too much like work to me:
I’ve built my house on air,
and like a soaring wind-borne dove,
my home is everywhere.
..
I cannot bear austerity,
and, since I am confessing,
the gravity of saints has always
struck me as depressing.
Virtue is a tedious job,
love’s work is sweet as honey;
the riches that Queen Venus gives
mean more to me than money.
..
So down the open road I go,
exulting in my youth.
I flaunt my weaknesses with pride,
and if I search for truth,
I’m likelier to encounter it
in one beguiling face
than all the monkish breviaries
imploring heaven’s grace.
..
Bless me, father, I have sinned,
or curse me if you’d rather.
Our fate is ashes, dust, and night;
theology is blather.
What fun can an angel have?
The flesh is sweet damnation,
so let me glory in its joys,
and you can have salvation.
..
Each creature needs its proper food
to keep it flourishing:
our youthful flesh requires the same
for proper nourishing.
The world is filled with lovely girls,
our prime will soon have ceased:
with such a splendid banquet spread,
why not enjoy the feast?
..
Hold a hot coal in your hand:
you think that it won’t burn you?
If you think you’re chaste, Pavia’s
fleshpots soon will learn you.
There, each day’s a holy day,
the Feast of Saint Carouse;
the streets are lined with palaces,
and every one’s a house.
..
Take a youth so pure, he looks
on *** as an infection;
set him in Pavia and
he’ll be one big ********
There, Venus smiles from every door:
Pavia! where you’ll see
a monument to every vice,
except virginity.
..
A further accusation lodged
is that I like to gamble.
Well, what do you expect from one
whose whole life is a ramble?
And if I have to pawn my cloak
and shiver in the cold,
that gives me the asperity
to keep my verses bold.
..
The third indictment, please. Ah yes:
it’s that I’ve got a thirst.
The tavern is my second home,
they charge. No, it’s my first.
They tell me to abandon it.
I say, “Don’t hold your breath.
Can you think of a better place
to wait around for death?”
..
And when he comes, I’ll greet him as
a friend should, with a toast,
and may my fellow drinkers cry,
when I give up the ghost,
“Our comrade’s gone to his reward,
so throw him on the wagon,
while we drink to his memory.
Innkeeper, a flagon!”
..
Now I have done: I have confessed
to what’s been charged of me,
admitting guilt of every sin,
except hypocrisy,
so judge, my lords. I have no more
to plead but this alone:
consider what’s in your own heart,
before you throw that stone.
..
..
— adapted from the Latin
Feb 12
Feb 12, 2026 at 10:48 AM UTC
Big Crit authorizes any person who has been called a poet in print to
wear an arm-band bearing the Happy Face.
Big Crit decrees that anyone who wins a poetry prize shall in respect of that honor give all subsequent public readings of his or her poetry
while wearing Groucho glasses.
Big Crit hereby commissions the production of an anthology to contain every poem ever published in which the internet is referred to, all copies of which are immediately to be burnt.
Big Crit ordains that henceforth all love poems shall be printed in
mauve ink on lavender paper and all war poems shall be printed in
Gothic type and all poems about poetry shall be printed upside-down and backwards and all poems about one’s grandmother shall be printed in black ink on black paper.
Big Crit enacts that from now on the verbal content of all paid
political advertisements shall consist solely of excerpts from the
plays of Aristophanes.
Big Crit orders all those possessing a budgerigar to teach said avian
to recite one line from the verse of William Carlos Williams;
and Big Crit further declares April 25th of each year to be Annual
Bird Bard day, on which the recitation of poetry shall be forbidden
to all but parakeets, so that there may be no ideas but in budgies.
Jan 18
Jan 18, 2026 at 12:58 PM UTC
Eros, Eros, sweetly despoiling
human hearts with your passionate fire,
never, never may you invade me
with so destructive a flood of desire.
Mightier, mightier than any gleaming
starlight endlessly piercing night’s radiance,
stronger than torches that paint the dark with flame,
flies the fatal shaft of the Love God,
child of all-seeing Zeus on Olympus
and Aphrodite: it strikes with deadly aim.
Vainly, vainly famous Olympia
and Delphi’s holy oracular shrine
richly, richly garner their harvest
of sacrifice and libations of wine:
O my country, why do you never
make oblation in honor of Eros,
born of the Love Queen to rule the minds of all?
Eros, guardian of Aphrodite’s
sacred chamber is mightier than armies:
he is the conqueror whose power makes cities fall.
Aphrodite kindled in Helen
a passion stronger than duty or shame:
Priam’s city, ancient and splendid,
is nothing now but a song and a name.
Death and terror, fire and destruction
blossomed forth from her heartbreaking loveliness,
leaving Troy’s citadel ashes soaked with blood.
Dreadful, dreadful comes Aphrodite,
whirling all in her devastating hurricane,
quick as a honeybee that seeks a springtime bud.
Dec 30, 2025
Dec 30, 2025 at 5:53 PM UTC
’Tis the last rose of summer! I shrieked in dismay,
and soon its bright petals must wither away!
O whence now the peach, the pear, and the orange?
For answer the door of time creaked on its door-hinge.
’Tis the first frost of autumn! I sobbed in despair,
and winter’s sharp teeth soon will bite the day’s air!
The leaves fall in shock at the season’s cruel crime,
like a dandruff of years on the shoulders of time.
’Tis the winter’s fifth blizzard! I howled in a rage,
and my soul gnaws its tail like a beast in a cage.
Though winter is wan, yet my passion is purple,
for griefs have my heart by the hair, and they sure pull.
’Tis the spring-time’s first peony! I squealed in delight,
and its delicate bloom is for sore eyes a sight!
Now the season’s warm joy holds the forests in thrall,
and I believe that I don’t feel so bad after all.
Dec 29, 2025
Dec 29, 2025 at 1:07 PM UTC
The temple.
The hill it is on.
What it is made of.
This is not what makes a difference.
My interest is what makes a difference.
This difference is what makes it interesting.
These are pieces of paper
and these of air.
There is a difference which is interesting.
Would you believe me if I told you
this is not my interest.
Come and show me the pieces of paper.
Come and show me the difference
between what is written on the pieces of paper
and what is written on the pieces of air.
This is the difference which is my interest.
The difference is what is interesting.
It is interesting that there is no difference.
It is interesting that you would not believe me
if I told you there was no difference
between the pieces of paper and the pieces of air.
The Greeks built temples out of air
and then the difference turned them into stone.
The Chinese built temples out of numbers
and then the difference turned them into paper.
The Etruscans built temples out of wood
and then the difference turned them into air.
There is a difference between air and stone
but it is the difference between paper and blood
which is my interest.
My interest is different
it is in the air in the wood
but you would not believe me if I told you.
The difference is written in blood on paper
but you would not tell me if you believed me.
Cotton candy. Popcorn. Taffy apples. Brine.
All these are different
but the difference is not what is interesting.
What is interesting is the difference
between what I told you and what I believed you told me.
The difference is there and it is interesting.
The interesting difference is that you believed what I told you
in the temple of air
in the temple of stone
in the temple of numbers
in the temple of wood
in the temple of paper
in the temple of sunlight.
Dec 29, 2025
Dec 29, 2025 at 1:04 PM UTC