Category Archives: Free Verse

March 30, 2020 · 3:24 pm

I Sang My Exile – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Image: lifehacker.com.au

 

“Let us put it generally: if a regime is immoral, its subjects are free from all Obligations to it.”  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I Sang My Exile

I didn’t understand the beginning
let alone the disappointing ending
that never came past my mind,
an exit wound of bridges collapsed
in rivers of impenetrable ink
coursing primitive territories
where I walked my concerns
and talked my shortcomings,
feeding off subcultures,
those cults of dark rebellion
that slither in alleys
to light the way,
it was there that I
sang my exile.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com.

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March 29, 2020 · 4:07 pm

This Sacred Ground – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Photo: Flat Rock, along the Blackwood River.

“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.”   Joseph Campbell

 

This Sacred Ground

The fruit of adolescence recaptured
that old reckless abandon,
a fearless letting go returned
as I came across the first stone,
I was moved, overcome, and I cast
myself upon the sweet-smelling earth,
kicking off my shoes in a Moses moment,
daring to touch this sacred ground
the very core of me.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

23 Comments

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March 28, 2020 · 2:33 pm

A Simple Hope – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Photo: at the back of Tamma Park, Merredin. Sun shining through the rain clouds.

 

“The most precious light is the one that visits you in your darkest hour!”  Mehemet Murat Ildan

A Simple Hope

I saw her lips move
but no sound evolved
her eyes stone cold
in her heavy void,
that inner world
of the paper house
waiting to be torched
in a celebration of survival,
a rising beyond the
everyday ordeals,
nightmares,
but a lock is always an invitation,
so I ventured to speak a simple hope,
that we might just find a summer
in the midst of our winter.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com.

34 Comments

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March 27, 2020 · 4:20 pm

Fiction – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Meet The Bar – Final Couplet

Frank at dVerse has invited us to write a poem, but which must end with a rhyming couplet.

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Photo: foster.vic.au

 

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”  Marcel Proust

Fiction

The fetish of nostalgia reeks
like overripe banana in
an open bin on a hot day,
vanguard of decay in this
haunt of demons
waiting to persuade me,
to humiliate proud memories
that now enter the picture
distorted by time’s passing,
exposed hubris,
a repressive fiction
needing confessional diminution,
awaiting with shreds of contrition.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

13 Comments

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March 26, 2020 · 4:03 pm

Flaking Legends – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Photo: gdaypubs.com.au The former One Tree hotel in Hay.

 

“While all old people have been young, no young people have been old, and this troubling factor engenders the frustration of all parents and elders, which is that while you can describe your experience, you cannot confer it.”  Andrew Solomon

Flaking Legends

An incomplete picture,
flaking legends,
broken frames and corry,
the place of rusted stories
the utterances of elders
railing conformities,
shaping new spirals
of futures undreamed,
incomplete visions verging,
questioning what we know,
let alone what we believed,
myths of belle époque
passing in the night
as we swept history aside
and made our own songs.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com.

17 Comments

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March 25, 2020 · 4:19 pm

Birthed By Silence – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Now I Can See

Mish at dVerse has invited us to consider – what do you see? in relation to the world and our experience as we find it right now.

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Photo: canberratimes.com – supermarket shelves after panic buying. It seems to me that corvid-19 is a killer, but it not only kills the body, it kills our very soul.

 

“Be confidently assured that any gods we build will always have voracious appetites, and sooner or later they will gorge themselves on that which built them.”  Craig D. Lounsbrough

Birthed By Silence

A darkness creased the brow of Eden,
and pathos sang dirges as
questions came begging,
had we cast the god of this age
on that rude altar of fantasy?
A natal faith so naive
its store the rhetoric of largess.
What shall I call it?
What can I call it?
A sacrifice of truth?
But I digress, and
returning to the roots
of the crisis I wondered,
do we only ask important
questions when tragedy strikes?
A silence waits patiently in answer,
and I know that wise words are
birthed by silence.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

56 Comments

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March 24, 2020 · 3:13 pm

Real Unreality – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Magic.

Linda at dVerse has invited us to write a Quadrille (44 words) on magic.

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Image: wallpaperweb.com

 

“Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.”  Carol Moseley Braun

 

Real Unreality

Reality is never anything but
an imperfect substitution laid
across the psychic landscape,
set to fool the mind’s eye,
a fickle reign, until
depth calls to depth
an un-curated magic of soul
from the crucible of rituals,
a real unreality of
healing disruption.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

22 Comments

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March 23, 2020 · 2:58 pm

For A Rainy Day – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

VJs Weekly Challenge – Imaginary

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Image: istockphoto.com

 

“The real world is much smaller than the imaginary one.”  Friedrich Nietzsche

For A Rainy Day

I bought an imaginary
just the other day,
took it home and
kept in its box
for a rainy day,
I peeked,
watching it glow
as it beat like a heart
of swirling colour,
then today I set it free
ending the darkness.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

50 Comments

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March 22, 2020 · 3:11 pm

Hope – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Photo: istockphoto.com

 

“Hope is passion for what is possible.”  Soren Kierkegaard

Hope

Those days, when life seems
constrained somehow
to small spaces of feeling
in the midst of the hurried
affairs of feet rushing past,
in my waiting,
in my knowing,
audacious confidence
burns into my skin as
my words come back to me,
that hope comes from struggle.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

 

39 Comments

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March 21, 2020 · 2:38 pm

The Mystery – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Art: Raphael-Toussaint found at commons.wikimedia.org

 

“life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.”  Marge Piercy

The Mystery

I want to understand,
to embrace the mystery of
the soil in which life grows,
to understand the weightlessness
of the fruit of this tree,
the fleeting hours of its
gentle opening to the world,
and strange scenes which
humiliate proud minds,
or even just the moment
of discovering the empty
birds nest, regretting
my lateness.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

21 Comments

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