Category Archives: Poetry

CENTCOM DX’s T’s KPIs

Posted on June 26, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

Being a lesson on muddying the waters to make them look deep. . . . “Management consultants steal your watch and then tell you what time it is.” –Martin Kihn “Let me speak, for a moment, from a 50,000-Foot-Perspective,” said … Continue reading →

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A Ditty for the Don, Cheeto Trumpbalone

Posted on March 18, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

Ah, I feel a song coming on. There’s a big sinkhole at Mar-a-Lago. Let that sink in. Donnie is our president Although he did not win A popular plurality, And that is just a sin. Ask me what I think … Continue reading →

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To a Young Poet | Bob Shepherd

Posted on March 18, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

for Brooke Belk Your work is grounded in Earth, Mycelia conspiring with roots To fashion, again, the wordless Lotus: its petals, tongues.

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Play and the Origins of Art

Posted on March 18, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

In the middle of the last century, anthropologists discovered something surprising: supposedly “primitive” hunter-gatherers like the Aborigines of Arnhem Land, in Northern Australia, and the !Kung San of the Kalahari, in Southern Africa, spent only about 20-something hours a week … Continue reading →

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History Lesson, or on the Hinterweltlern

Posted on March 18, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, Ye are Gods’?” –John 10:34 Plato imagined he looked on beauty bare When beholding in his mind the perfect square, For no carpenter’s square under heaven could one find, As perfect … Continue reading →

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Four Short Essays on Reading and Writing Poems

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

On Reading and Writing Poems Some thoughts, tonight, about reading and writing poetry How Poetry Means Perhaps the most important lesson that I received, in college, about reading poetry occurred on a day when, in a class on nineteenth-century American … Continue reading →

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To His Lowness Don the Con, by the Grace of His God, Mammon, IQ 45, Prez Pinocchio, The Dapper Don v2.0, Donnie Trumpty Dumpty, Child-Man in the Promised Land, Repugnican, with Apologies to EBB

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. I loathe thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach. I cannot stand the sight Of thee. Disdain thou makest me embrace. I loathe thee to … Continue reading →

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Jesus and I (for James Tate) | Bob Shepherd

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

So, Jesus and I were taking a road trip through North Carolina. We made a wrong turn and got onto this country lane that dead-ended into a slaughterhouse—this big garagelike door, open, and the screams of the pigs coming out … Continue reading →

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Charge of the Goddess, for Beltane

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

This is a recasting of the Charge of the Goddess from the Gardnerian liturgy, which was purportedly an accurate transcription of that employed in the ritual Sabbats practiced by one “Old Dorothy” Clutterbuck, a priestess of the Old Religion. Modern … Continue reading →

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Midsummer | from My Novel Pagan Moon

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Bob Shepherd

Being the minister’s son’s prophetic dream. Midsummer. Night. Clouds roiling past a gibbous moon. The air heavy with honeysuckle and jasmine and pheromones. Vines twisting darkly up the bodies of trees. Mushrooms heaving skyward the weighty black loam. Bats, owls, … Continue reading →

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