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A waif on this earth,
Sick, ugly and small,
Contemned from my birth
And rejected by all,
From my lips broke a cry,
Such as anguish may wring,
Sing, — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


By Wealth's coach besmeared
With dirt in a shower,
Insulted and jeered
By the minions of power,
Where — oh where shall I fly?
Who comfort will bring?
Sing, — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


Life struck me with fright —
Full of chances and pain,
So I hugged with delight
The drudge's hard chain;
One must eat, — yet I die,
Like a bird with clipped wing,
Sing — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


Love cheered for a while
My morn with his ray,
But like a ripple or smile
My youth passed away.
Now near Beauty I sigh,
But fled is the spring!
Sing — said God in reply,
Chant poor little thing.


All men have a task,
And to sing is my lot —
No meed from men I ask
But one kindly thought.
My vocation is high —
'Mid the glasses that ring,
Still — still comes that reply,
Chant poor little thing.
I took my heart in my hand
  (O my love, O my love),
I said: Let me fall or stand,
  Let me live or die,
But this once hear me speak
  (O my love, O my love);
Yet a woman's words are weak:
  You should speak, not I.

You took my heart in your hand
  With a friendly smile,
With a critical eye you scanned,
  Then set it down,
And said: It is still unripe,
  Better wait awhile;
Wait while the skylarks pipe,
  Till the corn grows brown.

As you set it down it broke,--
  Broke, but I did not wince;
I smiled at the speech you spoke,
  At your judgment that I heard:
But I have not often smiled
  Since then, nor questioned since,
Nor cared for corn-flowers wild,
  Nor sung with the singing bird.

I take my heart in my hand,
  O my God, O my God,
My broken heart in my hand:
  Thou hast seen, judge Thou.
My hope was written on sand,
  O my God, O my God;
Now let Thy judgment stand,--
  Yea, judge me now.

This contemned of a man,
  This marred one heedless day,
This heart take Thou to scan
  Both within and without:
Refine with fire its gold,
  Purge Thou its dross away,--
Yea, hold it in Thy hold,
  Whence none can pluck it out.

I take my heart in my hand,--
  I shall not die, but live,--
Before Thy face I stand;
  I, for Thou callest such:
All that I have I bring,
  All that I am I give,
Smile Thou and I shall sing,
  But shall not question much.
Julian Feb 2017
In the cavernous expanse gilded out of silicon robes of Greece flattened into the diminutive spaces between crags and rock, the swimmers of the natatorium embrace to plunge in transparency where they erred in covert chivalry
Knighted partially by association but yet unofficially born of sentiments rebarbative to the well-heeled, I linger like tar heels lamenting that the supernova eventually bequeaths the death of the ultimate chapel hill a shining city on a valley masquerading as a hill
From past and repast, the nurture of former presidents calumniates if also embraces the possibility of unfettered liberty and prosperous futurity, they simper in silent lugubrious reflection at lives shortened by liberty prolonged, of hearts opened but death devolved
Latitude and the caress of brazen attitudes corners the ***** in a tightened alcove of a restrictive forest of livid and limpid dastardly deeds, the arm of hunched idiots grazing with dumbfound idiocy at their own protective duty to shepherd the forest only for the singular trees as though disease itself is only a tease in a flirtation too exposed to believe
I joust with giants in a town that brooks lions and lyon estates with too many GrayZe superintending too many fain and valiant graves littering the stream besides the Pennsylvania forest in a past sunken in intrigue slipping in and out of an ethereal time invented by a harvest moon too attuned to be a lunatic any time soon
Whither is the outcome of a Shakespearean demise of prattle becoming the pasture of specious but solid skies, gleaming that a science fiction theater isn’t hailing a fuhrer or jingoistic furor any time soon hopefully I do too croon.
Militant tapestries of unhinged madmen craven in their disregard for every bent temptation, we witness the downfall of scrounged indecency and lonely hearted thieves contemned as they condemn perdition upon an unsuspecting victim
The victim is the hope of galvanized promise, a regal flutter of liberty tracing the skies elaborately for the flight plan most likely volitant and most destined to succeed
Corporate heads shake hands with desperate beds that Damocles himself wishes blood himself was yet shed or never shed but cutthroat collapse is avoidable with the recrudescence of provident relapse and rejoinder, asunder the ships may seem but now aimed so directly like a laser pointer
Titanic is a father to founding fathers only in the regress of avoidant times, sheepish of the whispered grime of inutterable blithe sublime time, limpid in partial acknowledgment of a wretched fate as avoidable as possible with the proper introduction and the right heeded date of a love better than choice wine and the wineskins of an indian province live as well just as much in a Skinnerian time.
Read the palimpsest, pittance proferred for every skeptical and undeclared bet that skewers the coffers of a criminal ring of Barnum Brothers in bed with burned asylum, a sanitarium wider and menacing like the most minatory lion
But the jaws of these aliens in time, whether specious or not thrill only those susceptible to the flattery of swank and the travesty to which we thank our deliverance and suspected exoneration
Flanking the outstripped malls that sprawl in the orbit of cities engorged like a skyscraping promise littered by Walled Ease and regaled bleats that belay down the cliffs of rigid insurrection only partially courageous to noble and partial inflections.

The courage of a wistful day slipping into the fathomless depths of dudgeon and pain the dungeons clamoring of insanity willfully reign, we clip the newspapers to the walls and scrawl our loves into the fallen scrawl.

Crimson red beneath the spangled spars, the author of debauchery immemorial that swills and wassails its own heartrending blues. And this movie squandered in limelight but buttressed by blithe regards for morally debased frights. Sting me the police and see the wasps nest infest your hollow diatribe to the extent you are hobbled in the depths, ennobled aboveground but nevertheless widely pitied.
The mathematics of love and loss, cravings for distrusted sacraments on a blue bus swiveling though the recesses of aleatory or controlled time. But then I lament that fully loved and fully lived is a fluff of sacerdotal emulation rather than the true authorship of heaven blanketing the earth.
Polished polity renegades and the rumpus of crumbled heaped ashes in a cremated time, where sand itself is eternal and sentience is somehow the door to nothing but despair, in their blinkered hubris that scales the lizards back in order to be lifted by olfactory graft.
In that light I see a bright whisked wind carrying the secrecy of portentous spared revelations and the spate of intermittent lightheardedness blows away my skepticism, but sides have been chosen and the bluster of the past emulating the culmination of an amenable future scares the birds from their chavish
Chiliads chill like excellency dissembled as the husk of an eternal monument of punctuated emphatic glory lingering above the ground with intransigent resistance to gravity and an slaver of better sincerity in the attempt to become beyond guileless tourists.
Dressed rankled blue swayed news, always operative in militant conformity to an eradicated sentience but simulatenously a wider sing song enlightenment. I struggle for words in this debased state of pitiable futures plastered all over every billboard that ever matters rather than the closure of closed doors trampled by intermittent dreams and seamless cows becoming the heifers of unified peace.
Smaller that the ants the infest the hills but more glorified than the quiet pristine ponds that outskirt the skirts that need less descent and more ascendancy.

Blitzkreig of cosmic wars swelters the torrid desiccation of a languor existing in human platitude but defiled of human gratitude. We swiftly wait for the erosion of sanity to become the author of a novella of craven deeds and bolted brimstone, serenading a rush towards sensation and an abandonment of rivers libation
Beneath which rivers flow, scrounged glowers endemic to a ruddy blush of sun-stricken grace, I clasp every remedy and every catholicon becomes more ecumenical and more rabid with stricken gaze of disordered streets in festivity but inured of nothing but lazy passions rather than sought rations
Dickens and hard hammers scribble the parched concrete with Chinese depths masqueraded as a suburban muse for canned applause and raucous crews relishing everything crude.
In the refinement the poet slings his garment over his shoulders and buys coffee for his ***** queen, and how to outfox such gallantry and how to temper so much enthusiasm. Only by the skullduggery of dead hands anointed with Greenwich bands.
She, good signor, whom in stormy sea
With thee faithfully and firmly stood--
Steadying the family boat with fasting
And prayer whilst thou hard wert  rowing
Against tempest--should nay in peace
And prosperity be by thy head misunderstood
Nor for another girl be in thine eyes contemned,
Lest by heaven thy new blessing is ******.
Contemned.
World's riches all
can't a single soul
redeemed--
minuscule.
Ignatius Hosiana Jan 2017
I didn't reach here by watching where am going,
But by remembering where I have been.
The roads I have walked, the tears cried, the quagmire of
despair I trudged, the waves of ravenous immiseration
the million Heartbreaking incidences trampled
the moments many contemned me and my family...
I have reached here by always realizing the hardship wasn't
all for nothing and that every thorny road was preparing
my feet to go the distance, to walk the extra mile…
Far from the end, but the worst part is over, the jinx is broken,
I can now touch my wallet and smile, I can now dial a handset instead
of walking four miles to make Mama a call... I can now appreciate
every drop of water because I've been to the wells of hell
and lifted the fragile *** of my hopeless reality until here.
It isn't a garden of roses, but even roses have thorns and as long as I keep
the memories of the past, as long as I never forget that
I have seen worse, I will always find challenges easier
than they ought to be after all the load of destiny never gets
lighter, the donkey of our faith just grows stronger. Forgive the
past, but never make a mistake of forgetting the **** you've
been through however pungent the stench of reminiscence maybe.
I am who I am now and I will always try to be better and to want more
Because that’s what God made me for, to dream big and go dream chasing…
I’ve ploughed through the waves and it’s made me a better sailor
Who’s always aware that storms happen but they can be overcome.
Ain’t no need watching where I’m going, just need to know where I’ve been.
Michael Edwards Jan 2019
Unlocked by stirred ascendancy
with chilled resolve to liberate
the world contemned by narrow minds
they stoked the coals of fiery  love
and  burned in lusts embrace.
I love writing short pieces - they often carry the most impact as I hope this one does.
Mohd Arshad Dec 2018
You contemned me,
Abused me,
Stabbed me.

Is the revenge in unrequited so easy?

— The End —