Poems

Order should be imposed on my poems, but isn't likely to be until I turn to carpentry, or painting, to carry me through the day. The display here is latest first.

Family album, 2026 additions

Mourn America, Grieve America

All But the Few

Poetry versus Creative Writing

Season to be Witched

Not Unlike the Hoi Polloi

Tart Sweet, Mes Amis

Boycott and Embargo

Patriotic Pronouns

Holy Calendarism

Words couldn’t care less

Meditation on the Counter-revolutionary Nature of Laureateships

Introibo Ad Altare Dei

From the Book of Young Dave, the Elder

Caution! Babies on board

Only Poets Can Serve Two Masters

Hollow and unholy is “it”

Make Calfs Golden Again?

Reading Matters

What Poetry Does

Expel Poetry to Restore the Republic

The First One’s Free

Poetry Isn’t Blue, It’s Read

After Dallas, There’s More

Partisan Scourge and Poetry Prize

Most Foul Murder

Big Sister Watches Ewes

Mutual of Idaho’s Ivory Tower Power Hour

Big Beautiful Bombs

Birdsong at Dawn

Anti-social Media

No Virginia, there is no Santa Clause

Google’s Trumpian Gulp

Social media makes bank, not community

Dogs, Cats, Birds, and Breeze

A Rose Versus Prof’s Nosegay

Let MAGA Quake, the West’s Awake

Death Hasn’t All Dominion

Hoist on their own petard

Poetry is Dead, Long Live Poems

Semiquincentennial dirge/hymn

Organics matter

One Decade At A Time

Ars poetica, again

Rook’s Remorse

The Equity of Poetry

Eyewitness Blues, April 5, 1968

A Biblical portion

Fringe of lunacy

By Their Agreeable Quarrel

The Second Falling, Jan. 20, 2025

February 24, 2022

Or, are we smarty pants after all

You’ll Find Poems in the Dairy Aisle

Manhattan Bridge, Edward Hopper, 1928

Berkshires fall foliage, Parson’s Marsh, Lenox

Prayer for the Fallen

Speaking of Which

New England October

Why JFK Had to Go

Wither Grass Roots

Red Dead + Blue Dead = Dead Dead

When Lilacs Next in Cell’d Palms Wither

Wiseguys are the New Wranglers

X marks the spot

Botanical America, or Project 2026

Semiquincentennial Dirge

Lament for the Visually Impaired

Don’t Be So Retarded

All that glitter

They’re OK, I’m OK

If Pronouns Could talk

Charge of the Light Blue *Brigade

Poetry is not speech

Apprentice and Aspirant Poets

April is cruel to Kings, not lovers

Alma Mater, or The Football Poem

Readers and Writers

Which dash-American are You?

Mothers and fathers of fodder

The Know Testament

Fat heads crave A.I.

Good Morning Body, Mind, & Soul

Organic prompts

A.I. is a big fat lie

What’s new is not

Dumb as a Smartphone

The Left isn’t Right, Emerson Is

Poetry is magic

They Push-We Pull

Everyday is Earth Day

Must poems be reasonable?

Art Matters, Entertainment Counts

The Gravest Show on Earth

If it were only truth

Lord Tennyson Prays for Peace

Emerson’s Art

Eyesight Insight

The Sympathetic Point of Roses

How to Tell a Good Poem

Overheard at VerseFest

The American Binary

Song of My Community

Or, current resident

How Risible the Visible

The Poet as Critic

On feet of clay

Break the News Cycle

Rhymes with Rushmore

To the Esteemed Poets

February Souvenir

Late October colors Lenox in the Berkshires

October in a Poem

Monetizing private Ryan, or WW Too

Principal Retardation

Word to the Wise

Not These Hollow Pols

Occidental Haiku

If it’s Bad for Metaphor, it’s Bad for Politics

Alphabet Soup for the Soul

Wintertime Blues

Free Poets Free Poetry

Read On, Write In, Drop Out

Dressing Tennyson

We are Champions

Syllogism for Non-philosophy Majors

Modern American Poetry

Amanda, Dame Commander of the Lite Brigade

Whimsy whispers

T.S. Eliot skips Pigalle

Home Schoolin’

Backyard Agriculture

Childhood escaped, with breadcrumbs

The Poetry of Henry Adams

The British Dream

Ho Hum, More Gone

Have you seen Johanna?

Commonsense Manifesto

Portrait of the Artist as a Merry Prankster, or, Who’s Felicity?

Let Them Linger

The Plane Truth

Pivot of Spring

Mourning Meditation

Old Poets Lament

The Times it is a changling

Mash note to Selfiers

Bi-PartisanWhich

Souls of gray folk

After Boomer Era

In the beginning

Founding Shyster

Knew Baltimore Catechism

Battle them for the Republic

Let’s start over

Tyranny v. Liberty

Nature’s trombone

Schools of Poetry

The Saddest Thing

Rapping with J.V. Cunningham

Saturday rosary

Haiku is no sneeze

Lament for the Poets of Little England

Did Fiona Fail Hill Republicans?

U.S.A. 1776-1964

Notes on the New Racism

Peeskawso Peak, Monument Mountain, July, 2021

Poll, Pander, Plead – Repeat

Natural world monetized

the deconstruction of critical race theory.

Fakir’s Dozen Ways of Looking at Stuff

Say what, Leonardo?

Spring, and All that de(con)struction

Machine Learning

I Love Lois Lane

The Outer Borough Colonel, Old Bone Spur

Body and Soul C.I.S.

If Christ is English

Who Initiates Sex?

the poet self-shrinks

Damn you, Hasbro

The Apology of St. Andrew

crazy uncle, eh?

The Madness of Saint Amy of the Robes

Fancy Foodie Quiz

Diary of a Bipartisan Poet

Rude or Ignobel?

At the Crossroads

Kill U. or it kills U.S.

Blowin in the wings

Vital Graffiti – July 2, 2021

Deconstruction is cultural grave-robbery.

Visionaries need not apply

A Poet’s Dose

Not to brag, but

Emily Dickinson’s job?

Re-orient the occidental?

here’s to deb

Hope is a Golden Noose

The mind’s eyeball

America’s Got Stars

TV Reality Blinder

How-to Star Search

Mothers’ Work is Never Done

Ice Glen trail, Stockbridge, July 2020

Advice for the Novice, now on the Cape

Cape Cod Camp Haiku

Good Mount Rushmore

Fair Haven and Fort Ontario, July 2020

The Revolution, Live stream

Fear Sweeps America

Arts Not Popular

Her Subject is Poetry

Black is the new Beige

at the oh boy gym

Out the Window: June 23, 2019*

Savory Abstractions

Vernal Metaphysics

Art Hole in the Berkshires

self portrait in birthday suit

Fall Vespers and Winter Reverie

Vowels of bright desire

Weight of January

What’s bracing about spring

In the Matter of Form

Facade of Arrogance

The Muse Leaps Generations

Paean to an Eminence

What’s the Word

Words Are Like That

The Flush Plinths of Lenox

Mother’s Day Handwriting Samples

Who Tats Queen Anne’s Lace

Eagle Pond Farm Market

Portrait of a Pebble

Rhymes with Chump

Super Bowl haiku

Family album, 2026 additions

Thanks to cousin Chip, here are additions to the Read Family Album:

Ellen Bracken Swift, c. 1892

Elizabeth Donohue Read, c. 1890

Mary Berenice Swift, age 19

Nana, Elizabeth, Dad at SU 1941

Phil Read and Mother, Toronto 1942