Word Planet

Sing praises, Muse, of man who wears a mane,who grows a beard magnificent and fair,and grieve, O Muse, for man whose chin is plain,who dares to scar his face and shave it bare.A fuzzy 'stache and sideburns thick with hairdo form the very badge of manliness;the warrior who wills to whiskers wearrejoices in his face's shagginess.Not so the blockhead...

Both of you are seated when I enter the room To the smell of dried roses and smoky perfume The candlelight flicker sways the dimly lit hall Making tables for two dance in a masquerade ball I pull up a seat, the floor groans with despair I sit down to stilted talk and stiff wooden chairs Your spine pulled taut like a tamed violin string Your voice resonates...

The rain hit the roof like tiny silver buttons, spilling into ripples all across the yard. We raised our heads and our eyes molded into the crater of a sky, the threads of water shooting straight into us as we tried to count the clouds. We were no longer in some paved backyard in small-town suburbia, we were no longer kids with school in the morning,...

I’ll be waiting for when the night-time crowds diminishInto glittering shadows, after the masqueraders carouse past threeWatch them dance their night and paychecks awayPining for pandemonium, aching to ingest a riotI’ll wait for them to be done with their beers and bar slutsWhen they all crawl home, all the nighttime crowdsAll the women who have done...

Red woke up in his old cot and sleeping bag which he called a bed. It was some time in the morning -- he could tell by the thin streams of light coming in through the cracks between the boards in his shed. He didn’t need a clock -- the small luxuries of the unemployed. But he saw the lights, rubbed his eyes with his scrawny arms, and sat up. He looked...

At the marketAmidst the colors,Yells of street vendors,The aroma of spicesThe hot, thick air Lie the dead.Past the patty fields,Where workers bathe in the sunHarvesting rice For their masters, Lie the dead.Along the unpaved roads,On which the cattle roam,To graze beside the stone-cut stepsOf an abandoned shrineLie the dead.Behind the straw-thatched...