{"id":7400,"date":"2020-07-25T11:41:42","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T11:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=7400"},"modified":"2020-07-25T11:41:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T11:41:42","slug":"wings-a-poem-by-phillip-henry-christopher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wings-a-poem-by-phillip-henry-christopher\/","title":{"rendered":"Wings. A Poem by Phillip Henry Christopher"},"content":{"rendered":"

for Don Yorty<\/em><\/p>\n

 
\n1
\n 
\nYou read Rilke on 15th Street,
\noblivious to the traffic,
\nthe disinterested passing by,
\nthe text passing
\nfrom your passionate grasp
\ninto the ice-gray grip
\nof the grim theorist,
\nfull of dedication,
\nnot like devotion
\nborn in the hot bosom
\nof simplicity,
\nwhere poets lie
\ndefenseless
\nwithout ideology.
\n 
\nI could not abide the contrast well,
\nthe play of opposites
\nside by side on the sidewalk,
\none muse held fast
\nbetween them.
\n 
\nWith a pounding head,
\nI chose coffee in a plastic cup,
\ncaffeine, and relief
\nfrom senses pulled apart
\nin hot Philadelphia sun.
\n 
\n2
\n 
\nHe reads a thousand years
\nof suspecting truths
\nreads for angels
\nstripped of wings,
\nchoking in the dust.
\n 
\nNo, not angels…
\nHuman, mortal, cursed…
\nLike a vision
\non wings of wax,
\nbeating relentlessly
\nagainst the wind,
\nstriving to rise,
\nto leave cold ground
\nfor warmth of the sun,
\nto see in the light
\ntruth shadows distort.
\n 
\nAnd in the heat the poet
\nis brightly lit for a time,
\nuntil the thin seams of wax,
\nglue binding the act melts…
\nFeathers gleaned from birds
\nof all kinds and climes,
\nwings fashioned like a knife edge
\nslicing through time,
\nloose themselves from
\nthe poet\u2019s binding thoughts
\nto float slowly away,
\neach in its own direction.
\nThe act ends turning one last
\nhope-filled look into blinding light
\nreceding into the distance,
\nthen freefalling,
\nspinning earthward.
\n 
\n3
\n 
\nThat I could hold fast,
\nfreeze the falling poet
\none instant,
\nor embrace him once,
\nbut he flies among clouds
\nI fear to approach.
\n 
\n“Wings” excerpt from a 2017 chapbook, “Pizza and
\nChianti; The Philadelphia Poems.
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/philliphenrychristopher\/<\/a>
\n 
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n 
\nPoet, novelist and singer\/songwriter Phillip Henry Christopher spent his early years in France, Germany and Greece. His nomadic family then took him to Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Vermont before settling in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue collar America.Escaping high school, he made Philadelphia his home, alternating between Philly and cities across America, living for a time in Buffalo, New Orleans, Fort Worth, even remote Fairfield, Iowa, before settling in Indianapolis. While wandering America he has placed poems and stories in publications across the country and in Europe and Asia, including such noteworthy journals as The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Hazmat Review, Blue Collar Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blind Man\u2019s Rainbow and New York Quarterly<\/em>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times<\/a> at Artvilla.com<\/a> ; his publications include
\n 
\nAll the Babble of the Souk<\/em> <\/a>, Cartoon Molecules<\/em>, Next Arrivals<\/em> and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems<\/em>, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande\u00b4s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist<\/em> <\/a> and the recently published Tesserae<\/em> <\/a> <\/u>, a translation of Carmen Crespo\u00b4s Teselas.
\n 
\nYou may visit Aquillrelle.com\/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop <\/a>about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)<\/a><\/p>\n

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for Don Yorty   1   You read Rilke on 15th Street, oblivious to the traffic, the disinterested passing by, the text passing from your passionate grasp into the ice-gray grip of the grim theorist, full of dedication, not like devotion born in the hot bosom of simplicity, where poets lie defenseless without ideology.   … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[808,905,796,366,401,43],"tags":[18,136,874],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7400"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7404,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400\/revisions\/7404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}