preliminary explanation

before i really begin the project i have a few scatterings
of thought that made me do this, without real planning,
a different sort of impromptu that poetry's good at,
less Dionysian spur-of-the-moment with an already
completed poem entwined to a perfect ensō,
as quick as the decapitation of Mary Boleyn with the
executioner fooling her which side the swing would
be cast by taking of his hard-soled-shoes -
i mean this in an Apollonian sense - i know, sharp contrasts
at first, but the need to fuse them - i said these are
preliminary explanations, the rest will not be as haphazardly
composed, after all, i see the triangle i'm interested it
but drawing a triangle without Pythagorean explanation
i'm just writing Δ - i'll unravel what my project is
about, just give me this opportunity to blah blah for a
while like someone from an existential novel;
what beckoned me was the dichotomy of styles,
i mean, **** me, you can read poetry while in an awkward
yoga position, you can read it standing up, sitting down,
eating or whatever you want - obviously on the throne
of thrones taking a **** is preferred - the point being
what's called serious literature is so condensed for
economic reasons, font small, never-ending paragraphs,
you need an easy-chair and a bottle of cognac to get
through a chapter sometimes - or at least freshly mowed
grass in a park in summer - it's really uncomfortable because
of that, and the fact that poets hardly wish upon you
to be myopic - just look at the spacing on the page,
constantly refreshing, open-plan condos, eye-to-eye -
but it's not about that... the different styles of writing,
prose and the novel, the historical essay / encyclopedia
or a work of philosophy - what style of writing can
be best evolutionary and undermine each? only poetry.
poetry is a ballerina mandible entity, plastic skeletons,
but that's beside the point, when journalism writes history
so vehemently... the study of history writes it nonchalantly,
it's the truth, journalism is bombastic, sensationalist
every but what courting history involves -
a journalist will write about the death of a 100 people
more vehemently than a historian writing about the Holocaust...
or am i missing something? i never understood this dichotomy
of prose - it's most apparent between journalism and history...
as far as i am concerned, the most pleasurable style of
prose is involved in the history of philosophy, or learning per se,
but i'll now reveal to you the project at hand -
it's a collage... the parameters?

the subject of the collage

it weighs 1614 grams, or 3 lb. and 8 7/8ths oz.,
it's a single volume edition, published by Pimlico,
it's slightly larger than an A5 format,
3/4 inches more in length, and ~1 centimetre in
width more, it has a depth of 1 and 3/4 inches in depth,
a bicep iron-pumping session with it in bed -
i was lying with this behemoth of a book
in bed soothing out a semi-delirium state
listening to Ola Gjeilo's *northern lights
and flicking through the appendix, and i started thinking,
no would read this giant fully, would they?
the reason it's a one volume edition is because
the only place you'd read such an edition would
be in a library, at a desk, and you'd be taking snippets
out from it, quotes, authentic references points
for an essay, esp. if you were a history student,
such books aren't exactly built for leisure, as my arms
could testify... after the appendix i started flicking
through as to what point of interest would spur me
onto this audacious (and perhaps auspicious)
act of renegading against writing a novel (in the moment,
in the moment, i can't imagine myself rereading plot-lines
after a day or two, adding to it - that's a collage too,
but of a different kind - and no, i won't be plagiarising
as such, after all i'll be citing parallel, but utilising
poetry as the driving revision dynamic compared
to the chronologically stale prose of history) - i'll be
extracting key points that are already referenced and not
using the style of the author - the book in question?
Europe: a history by Norman Davies prof. emeritus
at U.C.L. - the point of entry that made me mad enough
to condense this 1335 page book (excluding the index)?

point of incision

Voltaire (or the man suspected of Guy Fawkes-likes spreading
of volatility in others) -
un polonais - c'est un charmeur; deux polonais - une
bagarre; trois polonais, eh bien, c'est la question polonaise
(one pole - a charmer, two poles - a brawl, three poles -
the polish question) - mind you, the subtler and gentler
precursor of the Jewish question, because the Frenchman
mused, and not a German, or a Russian brute...
and i can testify, two Polish immigrants in a pub,
one senior, the other minor, one with 22 years under
his belt of the integration purpose, one with 12 years,
the minor says to the senior about how Poles bring
the village life to cities, brutish drunkards and what not,
it was almost a brawl, prior to the senior was charming
a Lithuanian girl, before the minor's emphasis on
such a choice of conversation turned into idiotic Lithuanian
nostalgia about the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, primarily due to the Polish nobility.

10,000 b.c.

looking that far back i don't know why you even
bother to celebrate the weekend -
i mean, 10,000 years back Denmark was
still attached to Sweden,
England was attached to France,
and there was a weird looking Aquatic landmass
that would become a myth of Atlantis
in the Chronicles of Norwich,
speedy ******* Gonzales with the equivalent
of south america detaching itself from Africa...
mind you, i'm sure the Carpathian ranges are
mountains. they're noted here are hills or uplands,
by categorising them as such i'm surprised
the majority of Carpathian elevations as scolded
bald rocky faced, a hill i imagine to have some
vegetation on it, not mountain goats with rock and roof
for a blacksmith in a population of one hundred...
at this point Darwinism really becomes a disorientating
pinpoint of whatever history takes your fancy,
Europe - mother of Minos, lord of Crete,
progenitrix / ******* and the leather curtains
of Zeus's harem (jealous? no, just the sarcasm
dominates the immortal museum of attachable
****** to suit the perfect elephant **** of depth
the gods sided with, by choice, excusing the Suez
duct tightening of a prostate gland... to ease the pain
upon ******* rather than *******); mentioned by Homer
the Blind tooth-fairy, the Europe and the bull,
Europoeus and the swan, same father of wisdom to mind,
on the shores of Loch Lomond -
attributes a lover to the bull, Moschus of Syracuse,
who said earring Plato cured him of where the ****
should not enter even if it shines a welcome
in the disguise of Dionysius... revisionists bound to Pompeii
named Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens Veronese
and Claude Lorrain revived the bulging bull's *******
and her mm hmm mm, too gracious my kind, hehee...
Phonecians from Tyre and Io - so too the Sibyl of ****** -
and unlike the great river civilisations of the Nile,
the Ganges, soon to be the Danubian civilisations
and gorged-out-eyes-that-once-sore-colour-but-lost-sight-of-
colours-­after-seeing-the-murk-of-the-Thames...
soon the seas overcame civilisations of the rivers,
as Cadmus, brother of the thus stated harlot said:
i bring you orbe pererrato - hieroglyphics of the cage,
but not an owl or a hawk inside it -
so let's perfect speaking to an encoding by first
rummaging into learning how to procure the perfect
forms of counting - i say left, you say I, i say right
you say II, left right left right, what do you say?
VI. bravo! the Hellenic world just crossed the Aegean
and civilisation bore twins within the cult of a lunar-mother,
Islam of Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf
a canine of the night - according to another -
tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes - or so the myth goes -
a cherished phantom of what became the fabled story
of sole Odysseus with his ears open and the remnant
sailor's ears waxed shut - as if the bankers of this world,
revelling in culprit universal fancy than nonetheless
bred the particular oddities - lest we forget,
the once bountiful call of the sirens to the oceanic
is but a fraction of what today's sirens claim to be song,
a fraction of it remains in this world, the onomatopoeia
of the once maddening song, the crude *******
arrangement of vowels bound to the jealous god's
déjà vu of the compounding second H.

from myth to perpetuating a modern sentiment

you can jump from 10,000 b.c. to the Munich Crisis
of 1938 - 9 with a snap of the fingers,
imitating quantum phenomenons like gesticulating
a game of mime with Chinese whispers necessary,
if Europe is a nymph, Naples her azure eyes,
Warsaw her heart, Sebastopol and Azoff,
Petersburg, Mitau, Odessa - these the thorns
in her feet - Paris the head, London the starched collar,
and Rome - the sepulchre.
or... die handbuch der europaischen geschichte
notably from Charlemagne (the Illiterate)
to the Greek colonels (as apart from Constantine to
Thomas More in eight volumes, via Cambridge mid
1930s)... these and some other books of urgency
e.g. Eugene Weber's H. A. L. Fisher's, Sr. Walter Ralegh,
Jacob Bronowski... elsewhere excavated noun-obscurities
like gattopardo and konarmya had their
circas extended like shelved vegetables in modern
supermarket isles, for one reason or another...
prado, sonata sovkino also... some also mention
Thomas Carlyle (i'd make it sound like carried-away isle,
but never mind); so in this intro much theory,
how to sound politically correct, verifiable to suit
a coercion for a status quo... Europe as a modern idea,
replacing Imperum Romanun came Christendom,
ugly Venetian Pirates at Constantinople,
Barbarossa making it in pickled herring juice
in a barrel to Jerusalem... once called the pinkish-***-fluff
of Saxony, now called the pickled cucumber,
drowning in his armour in some river or Brosphorus...
alchemists, Luther and Copernicus were invited on
the same occasion as the bow-tie was invented,
apparently it was a marriage made for the Noir cinema,
beats me - hence the new concept of Europe,
reviving the idea of Imperium Romanun
meant, somehow including Judea in the Euro
championship of footie gladiator ***** whipped
narcissists, rejecting the already banished Carthage
(Libya / Tunisia by Cato's standards) and encouraging
the Huns, the Goths and the even more distant Slavs and
Vikings to accept not so much the crucifix as
the revised spine of the serpent but as the geometry of
human limbs, well, not so much that, but forgetting
Norse myths of the one-eyed and the runic alphabet
and settling for ah be'h c'eh d'ah.
dissident frenche stink abbe, charles castel de st pierre
(1658 - 1743) aand this work projet d'une paix perpetuelle
(1713) versus Питер Великий who just said:
never mind the city, the Winter Palace... i have aborted
fetus pickles in my bedroom, lava lamps i call them.
the last remaining reference to Christianity?
Nietzsche was late, the public was certain,
it was the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, with public reference
to the republica christiana / commonwealth was last made.
to Edmund Burke: well, i too wish no exile
upon any European on his continent of birth,
but invigorate a Muslim to give birth on it
and you invigorate an exile nonetheless:
Ezra expatriate Pound / sorry, if born in eastern
europe a ***** Romanian immigrant, pristine
expatriate in western Europe, fascist radio has
my tongue and *****, so let's play a game:
Russian roulette for the Chinese cos there's
a billion of them, and no one would really mind
a missing Chow Mein... chu shoo'ah shaolin moo'n'kah!
or a cappuccino whenever you'd like to watch
classic Italian pornographic cinema with dubbing
with nuns involved... Willaim Blake and his
stark naked prophesy, pope pius II (treatise 1458)
even though Transylvania, Tharce and Hungary
shared the same phonetic encoding with diacritical
distinctions like any Frenchman, German,
or Pole at the Siege of Vienna (1683)
to counter the antagonising Ottoman - i swear historians
do this one purpose, juggle dates and head-of-state figures
prior to entering a chronology - they must first try out
a ******* carousel before playing with the toy-train...
broadcasting to a defeated Germany public, T. S. Eliot
(1945) ****** import to into Western Germany
and talk of the failing moral fabric, China laughing
after the ***** intricacies of warfare of trade,
what was once wool we wished to be silk...
instead of silk we received vegetarian wool, namely
hemp, and Amsterdam is to blame... nuke 'em!
that's how it sounds, how a historian approaches
writing a history from the annals, from circa and
circumstance and actual history, foremost the abbreviations,
the fishing hook standards, the parameters,
the limits, and then the mathematics of history,
one thing culminating into another... contra Lenin
N. S. Trubetskoy, P. N. Savitsky, G. Vernadsky
Russian at the perks of the Urals - steppe Tartar shamans
or salon pranced pretty **** boys? where to put
the intoxicant and where to put the mascara... hmm,
god knows, or by 21st calculations, a meteor;
they say the history of nations is a history of women,
then at least the history of individuation
and of men who succumb to its proliferation
is astoundingly misogynistic.
Seton-Watson, among the the tombstones too reminded
of remarkable esteem and accomplishment
with only one gravedigger to claim as father...
as many death ears as on two giraffe skeletons
stood Guizot, men of many letter and few fortunes,
or v. v., incubators of cousin ***** and none the kippah
before the arrogant saintly diminished to
a justly cause of recession, ha ha,
by nature's grace, and with true advent of her progression
as guard-worthy pre- to each pro-
and suggested courteous of the ****** fibre,
oh hey, the advent of masqueraded woofing,
a Venetian high-brow, and jealousy out of a forgotten
spirit of adventure that once was bound
to hunting and foraging... forever lost to write  history of
a king dubbed Louis the XIV...
crucibles and distastes for the state to be pleased,
once removed from Paris, forever to Angevin womb
accustomed once more, at Versailles released -
as cake be sown so too the aristocratic swan necks
for worth of mock and scorn - and the dampening rain
rattle the blood-thirst of the St. Bartholomew's Day
slaughter, to date, the rebirth of Burgundy,
of Anjou, and with the dead king presiding, to be
of no worth in judging himself a king before god or pauper...
saluer Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville!
that i might too in stead rattle a few bones prior to burial
with the jaw that will laugh and chatter least
had it been to my kingly-stead a birth so lowly.
then at least in satisfactory temperament i procure a
judgement of the noble like of a *****
for an hour's worth of pistons and jarring tongues...
as if from a nobleman then indeed as if from a *****,
for who sold Europe and said: Arabia, if not the
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard?
the former colonial conquests served you not enough?
i imagine the reinstatement of Israel like
the Frankish states under Philippe-August...
precursors to a cathedral dubbed Urban the 2nd's..
there were only Norwegian motives in the Ukraine
and the black sea... Israel to me is like plagiarism
of the Frankish states of the middle-east, with Europe
slightly... oom'pah loom'pah mongolian harmonica.
some said Rudyard Kipling poems,
some said Mr. Kipling's afternoon tea cakes -
whichever made it first on Coronation St.
some also say the Teutonic barbecues -
it was a matter of example to feed them hog
and cannibalise the peasants for ourselves,
a Prussian standard worth an army standard of
rigour - Ave Maria - letztre abendessen nahrung -
mein besitzen, wenn in die Aden, i'd be the last
talking carcass...
gottes ist der orient!
gottes ist der okzident!
nord - und sudliches gelande
ruht im frieden seiner hande.
germany's lebensraum, inferiority and classification,
inferior slavs and jews, genetics and why my
hatred of Darwinism is persistent, you need
an explanatory noting to make it auto-suggestive
for Queen & Country? diseased elements,
Jewish Bolshevism, Polish patriotism,
Soviets, Teutons, the grand alliances of 1918
or 1945? Wilsonian testimony of national self-determi

late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore
of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon
sometimes obscured by impasto clouds
the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies
screaming in agony
Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there
naked and weeping, her hair and body
wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae
Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases
with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire
when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia
who sang an old Dutch love song as he did
Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet
in a puddle of passing moonlight
and didn’t seemed to mind, anything
to stop her endless wailing I heard him say
Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid
who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry
and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her
just look at Titian’s Madonnas
Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly
from the bullet wound in his abdomen,
where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him
just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt
steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art
Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending
it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue
but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises
way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe
my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts
where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the *******
borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it
now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe
Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies
he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming
where’s my ship where’s my ship
they’re all on the ship my paintings
my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows
I only killed one man
Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt
says it happens to all of us even our wives and
mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our *****
it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much
Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist
with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing
the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life
that’s what Monet was painting at the end
using the palette from the other side
pran transmitted through the wailing
of the waterlilies the siren’s song
that lures artists to their death
and then washes them clean for the next go
to pick up where they left off, alone
with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots
at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks
those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks
floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge
all the color gone from their plumage
drink the water Jackson or better yet
let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver
and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily
and float it out into the middle of the pond
where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids
and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts
can help it filter out the poison of living
too much and then you too Jackson
will make painterly love to Saskia and she will
daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue
and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows
and send you back into the world
where you will continue to splash us all  
as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined
our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever
Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side
get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for
splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at
and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead
drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny
Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson
and when you come back
spit it out on our parched souls

It is full winter now:  the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And ***** his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Full winter:  and the ***** goodman brings
His load of ******* from the chilly byre,
And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
The sappy billets on the waning fire,
And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare
His children at their play, and yet,—the spring is in the air;

Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
And soon yon blanched fields will bloom again
With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,
For with the first warm kisses of the rain
The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears,
And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers

From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,
And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs
Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly
Across our path at evening, and the suns
Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see
Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose
The little quivering disk of golden fire
Which the bees know so well, for with it come
Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.

Then up and down the field the sower goes,
While close behind the laughing younker scares
With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,
And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,
And on the grass the creamy blossom falls
In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals

Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons
Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,
That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons
With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine
In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed
And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.

O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock
And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.

Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns
Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations
With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,
And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind.

Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,
That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine,
And to the kid its little horns, and bring
The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,
Where is that old nepenthe which of yore
Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!

There was a time when any common bird
Could make me sing in unison, a time
When all the strings of boyish life were stirred
To quick response or more melodious rhyme
By every forest idyll;—do I change?
Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?

Nay, nay, thou art the same:  ’tis I who seek
To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare
To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!

Thou art the same:  ’tis I whose wretched soul
Takes discontent to be its paramour,
And gives its kingdom to the rude control
Of what should be its servitor,—for sure
Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea
Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’

To burn with one clear flame, to stand *****
In natural honour, not to bend the knee
In profitless prostrations whose effect
Is by itself condemned, what alchemy
Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed
Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain,
A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,
Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.

The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb,—
Were not these better far than to return
To my old fitful restless malady,
Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?

Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god
Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed
Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
Death is too rude, too obvious a key
To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy.

And Love! that noble madness, whose august
And inextinguishable might can slay
The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must
From such sweet ruin play the runaway,
Although too constant memory never can
Forget the arched splendour of those brows Olympian

Which for a little season made my youth
So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence
That all the chiding of more prudent Truth
Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O hence
Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis!
Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss.

My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,—
Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow
Back to the troubled waters of this shore
Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now
The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,
Hence!  Hence!  I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.

More barren—ay, those arms will never lean
Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul
In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;
Some other head must wear that aureole,
For I am hers who loves not any man
Whose white and stainless ***** bears the sign Gorgonian.

Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,
And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,
With net and spear and hunting equipage
Let young Adonis to his tryst repair,
But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell
Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.

Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy
Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud
Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy
And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed
In wonder at her feet, not for the sake
Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.

Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!
And, if my lips be musicless, inspire
At least my life:  was not thy glory hymned
By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre
Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon,
And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son!

And yet I cannot tread the Portico
And live without desire, fear and pain,
Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
The grave Athenian master taught to men,
Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,
To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.

Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,
Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,
Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse
Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne
Is childless; in the night which she had made
For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed.

Nor much with Science do I care to climb,
Although by strange and subtle witchery
She drew the moon from heaven:  the Muse Time
Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry
To no less eager eyes; often indeed
In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read

How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war
Against a little town, and panoplied
In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,
White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede
Between the waving poplars and the sea
Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylae

Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,
And on the nearer side a little brood
Of careless lions holding festival!
And stood amazed at such hardihood,
And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,
And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er

Some unfrequented height, and coming down
The autumn forests treacherously slew
What Sparta held most dear and was the crown
Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew
How God had staked an evil net for him
In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim,

Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel
With such a goodly time too out of tune
To love it much:  for like the Dial’s wheel
That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon
Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes
Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.

O for one grand unselfish simple life
To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills
Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!

Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul
Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
Where love and duty mingle!  Him at least
The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast;

But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote
The clarion watchword of each Grecian school
And follow none, the flawless sword which smote
The pagan Hydra is an effete tool
Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now
Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?

One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!
Gone is that last dear son of Italy,
Who being man died for the sake of God,
And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,
O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower,
Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour

Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or
The Arno with its tawny troubled gold
O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror
Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old
When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty
Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery

Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell
With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,
Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell
With which oblivion buries dynasties
Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast,
As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.

He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,
He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair,
And now lies dead by that empyreal dome
Which overtops Valdarno hung in air
By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene
Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!

Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies
That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine
Forget awhile their discreet emperies,
Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine
Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon,
And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!

O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower!
Let some young Florentine each eventide
Bring coronals of that enchanted flower
Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,
And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies
Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes;

Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,
Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim
Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings
Of the eternal chanting Cherubim
Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away
Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay,

He is not dead, the immemorial Fates
Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain.
Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!
Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain
For the vile thing he hated lurks within
Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.

Still what avails it that she sought her cave
That murderous mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness
Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless

For lack of our ideals, if one star
Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust
Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe
For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,

What Easter Day shall make her children rise,
Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet
Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes
Shall see them ******?  O it were meet
To roll the stone from off the sepulchre
And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her,

Our Italy! our mother visible!
Most blessed among nations and most sad,
For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell
That day at Aspromonte and was glad
That in an age when God was bought and sold
One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,

See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves
Bind the sweet feet of Mercy:  Poverty
Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives
Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,
And no word said:- O we are wretched men
Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen

Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword
Which slew its master righteously? the years
Have lost their ancient leader, and no word
Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears:
While as a ruined mother in some spasm
Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm

Genders unlawful children, Anarchy
Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal
Licence who steals the gold of Liberty
And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real
One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp
That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp

Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed
For whose dull appetite men waste away
Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed
Of things which slay their sower, these each day
Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet
Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.

What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
By **** and worm, left to the stormy play
Of wind and beating snow, or renovated
By more destructful hands:  Time’s worst decay
Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,
But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.

Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing
Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air
Seems from such marble harmonies to ring
With sweeter song than common lips can dare
To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now
The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow

For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One
Who loved the lilies of the field with all
Our dearest English flowers? the same sun
Rises for us:  the seasons natural
Weave the same tapestry of green and grey:
The unchanged hills are with us:  but that Spirit hath passed away.

And yet perchance it may be better so,
For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,
****** her brother is her bedfellow,
And the Plague chambers with her:  in obscene
And ****** paths her treacherous feet are set;
Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!

For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
Of living in the healthful air, the swift
Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
And women chaste, these are the things which lift
Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s
Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes,

Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair
White as her own sweet lily and as tall,
Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,—
Ah! somehow life is bigger after all
Than any painted angel, could we see
The God that is within us!  The old Greek serenity

Which curbs the passion of that

I

My love, this is the bitterest, that thou
Who art all truth and who dost love me now
As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say—
Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still
A whole long life through, had but love its will,
Would death that leads me from thee brook delay!

II

I have but to be by thee, and thy hand
Would never let mine go, thy heart withstand
The beating of my heart to reach its place.
When should I look for thee and feel thee gone?
When cry for the old comfort and find none?
Never, I know! Thy soul is in thy face.

III

Oh, I should fade—’tis willed so! might I save,
Galdly I would, whatever beauty gave
Joy to thy sense, for that was precious too.
It is not to be granted. But the soul
Whence the love comes, all ravage leaves that whole;
Vainly the flesh fades—soul makes all things new.

IV

And ’twould not be because my eye grew dim
Thou couldst not find the love there, thanks to Him
Who never is dishonoured in the spark
He gave us from his fire of fires, and bade
Remember whence it sprang nor be afraid
While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark.

V

So, how thou wouldst be perfect, white and clean
Outside as inside, soul and soul’s demesne
Alike, this body given to show it by!
Oh, three-parts through the worst of life’s abyss,
What plaudits from the next world after this,
Couldst thou repeat a stroke and gain the sky!

VI

And is it not the bitterer to think
That, disengage our hands and thou wilt sink
Although thy love was love in very deed?
I know that nature! Pass a festive day
Thou dost not throw its relic-flower away
Nor bid its music’s loitering echo speed.

VII

Thou let’st the stranger’s glove lie where it fell;
If old things remain old things all is well,
For thou art grateful as becomes man best:
And hadst thou only heard me play one tune,
Or viewed me from a window, not so soon
With thee would such things fade as with the rest.

VIII

I seem to see! we meet and part: ’tis brief:
The book I opened keeps a folded leaf,
The very chair I sat on, breaks the rank;
That is a portrait of me on the wall—
Three lines, my face comes at so slight a call;
And for all this, one little hour’s to thank.

IX

But now, because the hour through years was fixed,
Because our inmost beings met amd mixed,
Because thou once hast loved me—wilt thou dare
Say to thy soul and Who may list beside,
“Therefore she is immortally my bride,
Chance cannot change that love, nor time impair.

X

“So, what if in the dusk of life that’s left,
I, a tired traveller, of my sun bereft,
Look from my path when, mimicking the same,
The fire-fly glimpses past me, come and gone?
- Where was it till the sunset? where anon
It will be at the sunrise! what’s to blame?”

XI

Is it so helpful to thee? canst thou take
The mimic up, nor, for the true thing’s sake,
Put gently by such efforts at at beam?
Is the remainder of the way so long
Thou need’st the little solace, thou the strong?
Watch out thy watch, let weak ones doze and dream!

XII

“—Ah, but the fresher faces! Is it true,”
Thou’lt ask, “some eyes are beautiful and new?
Some hair,—how can one choose but grasp such wealth?
And if a man would press his lips to lips
Fresh as the wilding hedge-rose-cup there slips
The dew-drop out of, must it be by stealth?

XIII

“It cannot change the love kept still for Her,
Much more than, such a picture to prefer
Passing a day with, to a room’s bare side.
The painted form takes nothing she possessed,
Yet while the Titian’s Venus lies at rest
A man looks. Once more, what is there to chide?”

XIV

So must I see, from where I sit and watch,
My own self sell myself, my hand attach
Its warrant to the very thefts from me—
Thy singleness of soul that made me proud,
Thy purity of heart I loved aloud,
Thy man’s truth I was bold to bid God see!

XV

Love so, then, if thou wilt! Give all thou canst
Away to the new faces—disentranced—
(Say it and think it) obdurate no more,
Re-issue looks and words from the old mint—
Pass them afresh, no matter whose the print
Image and superscription once they bore!

XVI

Re-coin thyself and give it them to spend,—
It all comes to the same thing at the end,
Since mine thou wast, mine art, and mine shalt be,
Faithful or faithless, sealing up the sum
Or lavish of my treasure, thou must come
Back to the heart’s place here I keep for thee!

XVII

Only, why should it be with stain at all?
Why must I, ‘twixt the leaves of coronal,
Put any kiss of pardon on thy brow?
Why need the other women know so much
And talk together, “Such the look and such
The smile he used to love with, then as now!”

XVIII

Might I die last and shew thee! Should I find
Such hardship in the few years left behind,
If free to take and light my lamp, and go
Into thy tomb, and shut the door and sit
Seeing thy face on those four sides of it
The better that they are so blank, I know!

XIX

Why, time was what I wanted, to turn o’er
Within my mind each look, get more and more
By heart each word, too much to learn at first,
And join thee all the fitter for the pause
’Neath the low door-way’s lintel. That were cause
For lingering, though thou called’st, If I durst!

**

And yet thou art the nobler of us two.
What dare I dream of, that thou canst not do,
Outstripping my ten small steps with one stride?
I’ll say then, here’s a trial and a task—
Is it to bear?—if easy, I’ll not ask—
Though love fail, I can trust on in thy pride.

XXI

Pride?—when those eyes forestall the life behind
The death I have to go through!—when I find,
Now that I want thy help most, all of thee!
What did I fear? Thy love shall hold me fast
Until the little minute’s sleep is past
And I wake saved.—And yet, it will not be!

"Here Made of Gone" for  Isabella Stewart Gardner
Lyrics By Randy Vera
Music By: Randy Vera and Anthony J. Resta  
http://bopnique.com/anthony-j-resta-and-randall-vera-finalists-john-lennon

LYRICS :
Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet, Degas, from my three thousand year old Chinese KU, I toast you. 

Mrs. Jack, I am your Bronze Eagle. I cut the painting at the frame – thieves by any other name.

Mrs. Jack with handcuffs and *****, I overcame your walls. Your collection’s complete.
Titian's Europa still hangs. The mirror to my:

Piece de la resistance. I’m your creme de la creme. I’m the John with the Procures on the wall in Vermeer’s concert.
Here, made of gone. 

Mrs Jack, I’m your new William James. Through your kindness, you support me, in Dutch Room empty frames.
Like John Singer Sargent, I toil between your walls. I am Vermeer’s "corn flower blue," indescribable. 
The metaphysical: Known unknown!

St Patrick’s Day 1990, I’m in Boston in the Fenway. For my penance, I’ll go to Saint John’s, drop to my knees, and like you, scrub the tiles clean.

Titian's Europa still hangs, the mirror to my: piece de La resistance. I’m your creme de la creme. I’m the John with the Procures on the wall in Vermeer’s concert. Here made of gone. 

Where language fails that where art triumphs. The interloper between camps of reason and dreams. I’m an event not cognition. Like any event stored in canvas, paper, pen ,or ink.

Oh Mrs Jack I so love your "Head Band." I’m also a Redsox fan. I loved the Champagne and donuts, and thank you for the paintings.

Post-azure, cloud splashed sky,
washes with the suns descent,
breaking into melodies of sunset.
Fracturing into a blush,
the richness of the spectrum
makes itself known.
On a tangent of change,
amorphous clouds bleed
amber glow
and bittersweet combinations
of reds and yellows.
Vermillion streaks through,
and a few cloud folk turn titian,
like sumptuous surreal apricots
rotting in the sky,
that seem to augur
encroaching darkness.
Billows on the horizon
leak crimson,
like spilled wine on table cloth,
and pucker out
like blooms of flaming roses.
Fire refracted
coloured cousins of the sun
are dancing all about.

Here is the anthem
of wild transformation.
Here is cause
for quiet celebration.
Here at this fluent juncture.
Here at the closing of day.

The whole of the ocean below,
is the skies tremendous mirror.
It's reflection is variegated,
into variations a thousandfold.
Multitudinous, and ever differentiated,
distortions of above
ride the crests of waves.
Each apex is a new story.
Each new story,
just as soon as it is told,
comes crashing into trough.
Each finale is the ****** of beginning.
The dynamic roar
of the oceans ever-changing topology
is rife with meaning.

Colossal symphonic wonders,
the primordial song,
releasing upon: the uni-
verse continual,
sending the manifest
to move, with the give and strain
of immaculate design.

Here ensconced
between the safety of light
and the mystery of night.
Here at the oceans edge.

Above, shades of catalina-blue, in conversation
with the outer most cosmic-black
dismiss earlier brighter hues.
Tinged by the infinite nature of space,
the jeweled dome darkens.
Overhead, the first stars appear,
sky transparent to beheld blackness.

Luxuriant, pulling horizon, attracts
violet into it's unfolding theatrics.
Bloodied clouds turn purplish, then black,
a darkening rawness allures,
decaying with vivid beauty,
tragedies of a rouged romance
drug down into shadows play,
searingly alive, extraordinarily actual.

And then, the hush of dusk.
Darkness is felled, like silence.
Scintillating stars
strengthen in the nights
surrounding abyss;
giving radiance definition.

Dynamic Beauty
Lives In Transition,
Oppositions
Compliment.

291

How the old Mountains drip with Sunset
How the Hemlocks burn—
How the Dun Brake is draped in Cinder
By the Wizard Sun—

How the old Steeples hand the Scarlet
Till the Ball is full—
Have I the lip of the Flamingo
That I dare to tell?

Then, how the Fire ebbs like Billows—
Touching all the Grass
With a departing—Sapphire—feature—
As a Duchess passed—

How a small Dusk crawls on the Village
Till the Houses blot
And the odd Flambeau, no men carry
Glimmer on the Street—

How it is Night—in Nest and Kennel—
And where was the Wood—
Just a Dome of Abyss is Bowing
Into Solitude—

These are the Visions flitted *****—
Titian—never told—
Domenichino dropped his pencil—
Paralyzed, with Gold—

This morning,
I walked with god and man, and animal

I've come to believe,
no other possibility,
He denies me sleep
as His insurance policy

some One wants to be sure,
someone sees His sunrise poem,
He selected this ancien regi-man
to be His admiring audience,
with deer, squirrels, rabbits, a red fox, an osprey
always complaining, why do they get
the cheap seats

so up at five,
no jive,
gotta get there early,
for a good seat,
on the dock by his name

watch the color blue transgender
from feminine elegy elegant pale
to peacock royal male,
the water,
a contributing editor,
phases in with a steely grin,
with ermine whitecap hints
and an orange marmalade sky homage,
I cannot try to describe

and here is where man comes in...

as the tableau reveals a still life
come to be,
a painting enlivened,
come to me free,
bursting with
effervescence and
animal life tribunes,
paying on...

strange...

my Pandora app
back to back,
plays for me
Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue,
hard upon it comes
Saint-Saëns's
The Carnival of the Animals

and I
enfeebled amateur,
needy for a
word titan Titian,
can think only
this trite thought:

I know not who is the
instrument and who
is the
artist,
but virtuous us,
We, all, now-capital-buddies,
now, all, well-color-capitalized,
god and man and animal,
crooning a chorus of appreciation

let this "accidental" miracle,
this collaboration,
enthuse me,
to live happily
with anticipation
for just one more day...

June 2014

She left me in a hurry,
with no word of her return
so I sit and wait, in longing,
keep her treasures safe, and yearn

for her face to gaze upon me,
as she fettles her dear skin,
with the pots of creams and lotions
I keep for her, within

my rose-lined drawers and cupboards,
the little blue glass bird
with wedding rings upon his beak
I asked, he hasn’t heard

of when our lady may be back
to grace us with her care,
her brushes sit with us and fret
of the tangles in her hair

and all lack of gloss and shine
finger tips cannot bestow
within her titian crowning,
oh! Where did she go?

Days slip by unhindered,
and merging seasons pass,
without her song or laughter
reflected in my glass.

I may as well be firewood,
my veneer begins to crack,
then, hark! I hear sweet footsteps!
My mistress has come back!

Her wedding rings rehomed at last,
the bird and I rejoice,
as she brushes out her hair and sings,
for we have missed her voice.

She polishes away the cracks,
takes a seat upon her throne,
rearranging pots and lotions,
I’m so glad that she came home.

Rusted butterflies swoop
Fall into the copper canyons of



My tires.

My soul whispered a secret to my heart,
It spoke of spilled blood upon a rose,
Rouged lips within the garden,
Drops of crimson liquid blush.

[CHORUS]
Nature’s beloved colour is green,
So red speaks of originality,
Blood is a passion,
Scarlet bleeding from thy own,
A claret sun dawning beyond,
Sanguine stained skies.

When the little cardinal sings sweetly,
A doorway opens I never chose,
Visions of a bloodshot key,
A lock rusted with dried blood.

A glimpse through the keyhole,
A pale forest awaits on the other side,
Showers of cherry blossoms,
Falling upon the snow.

Red berries bloom under crystal snow,
Glints of sunlight touch down,
Sparks of fire captured within,
Just beyond this rubicund door.

[CHORUS]

The dreams I am allowed,
Burn and scar my will,
When the door swings open,
Of its own accord.

Damask petals on the wind.
How warm and gentle that spray of blood,
Like a hundred tender kisses,
And the golden keys to Heaven.

I glimpsed the gules of true heraldry,
A suffused spirit at the dawn of memory,
Imprisoned by a cage of vermillion frost,
Warmed by a glass of spiced wine.

[CHORUS]

A roseate palace at the end of a long walk,
Painted titian by my tear drops,
Caress a florid complexion,
Carmine not my own.

Roan stones dusted,
By the fall of Angels light,
Make-believe incarnadine carpet of,
A mirrored auburn dusk.

I settle back into the maroon night,
The darkness flushed by concealed art,
Bay canvas touched-up with unreal imagery,
Indifferent to the passing of my former life.

[CHORUS]

Rubies fall from ruddy clouds,
These gems are not for me,
Reddened glass has come to pass,
The moment of my undoing.

[PAUSE (Epilogue)]

Red is not for me,
Red was not meant to be...

Sometimes I feel
Like a tethered titian
Of sorts
Tied to and underneath the
Footsteps of morals
Above me on earth
Angry with no shoes
I stomp around with my thunderous feet
Because no tailor would tie
String around my arches and leather beneath my soles
To protect me from the hot coals that line
The carpet of my cage.
A mythological beast of old is what I feel like
Some days
And in many ways
I feel like
A god of flight
Not confined to the barriers of night
But to the endless blue hued sky
That my golden wings contrast against
So sharply they cut through the air
Propelling me in circles around a bigger circle
That the mortals below me still think to be flat
My heels clasped with wings confining me
To the jail of myself where I am
The warden of one and exact my
Revenge on my prisoner daily
With the force of a titans foot
Tricked into thinking wings could
Be shoes.

“Mrs. Tubb, prepare my raincoat,” he said, “I’m going under the carpet.”
His ears were steaming.
“I’ll be waiting by the hanged stag,” he said. “If it gets to six and I'm still not home, put tobacco in the telephone.”

Down there, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs Tubb’s tears fell to the flattened backwards.
In the middle of the night, whilst she was sleeping,
And without her permission,
He had changed her name to Margot St. Vincent.

“Take off that murderer’s moustache and stretch out on the infamous Chelsea Blackmail Floor.
Ask the biggest bugs to dance,
You may never get another chance.”

The quietly handsome and magnificent Millicent Milligan was feeling rather ill again.
She had been dreaming of the brittle marigolds of Saint Petersburg.
She had been dreaming of pine cones and boiling marmalade.

Her home had fallen into a hole.
It was on the evening news,
But by the following morning they had lost interest,
A mountain had struck a commercial airliner and so no one was much impressed by her Home in Hole Hell.
355 were dead,
And possibly a well known racehorse,
And a corpse in transit who, of course, was already dead, but still, it was vexing for the family.
They found a priest in a poplar tree,
And the head of a hand model at the back of a cave.
(The hands were still intact and were couriered to their agent in a special flask).

Half in, half out of her delicious stockings
Wendice Titian cuts out scissor clippings of her
Sinister yellow sister.

Overnight the years twist.

Edgar Snooker has  heard he is to play ******'s dog on the silver screen.
Edgar Snooker is not a dog.
And the screen was never silver.
And besides, it is not true.
Someone is out to destabilise him.

As posh, brainwashed sausages consult
The Punchline Advisor of Dunkirk,

As the Lord is seen on all fours on His moon
Causing daily electrical police misfortune,

As the masses embark on the clamorous, scattered and impossible journey to disappointed purity,

As her money is without temperament,

As the self-conscious guilt daughter unbuttons her plush helmet,

So the richly magnetised stars are winding down.

As candles whisper in the middle of the road,

As Margot St. Vincent revolves the nickel tap
Of the gas powered knitting plate,

So Father Flynn is inconsolable.
He found a photograph of ****** Bob on top of his wife’s hat.
She denied everything,
Including that she was there at all.
Father Flynn fell for it.
That's faith for you.

chiaroscuro moment
molten chords
in golden glow
titian ringlets cascade
from linen shoulders
as your hands bring liquid color
to idle black and white
chorded words of three parts
Not easily broken
Ebb and flow as breath over water
a shift in timbre
resonant teak fettered in silver
heady scent of resin and balsam reeds
echoed drones the cantored dance begins
Taking flight the quiet arias rise
coursing low over open moors
Eyes veiled green
a fog shrouded shoreline
We leave transient prints
In damp sand...
Sonorous notes
From kilted pipers
A flash of tartan on thistled field
Drummers pulse the motion of life
You raise the standard
This ancient song is yours
and mine.

Open eyes to desert sky
Burning blue and empty
As fresh pages fall un-inked
on thorny ground
Only the ache of a melody remains
Lost refrains
broken notes in my DNA
Inspiration drifts away

I used to have a recurring dream of me, and two other friends - in a recording studio with the complete sheets of music in front of us - which we were singing...and when I wake up...I can never remember the song.
03/2008
© 2008 TL Boehm

chlorophyll green,
verdent, colour me trees
freeze dry to
amber, yellow, cardinal red liquid gold, titian, xanthous, carmine, deepwine burgandy, magenta, saffron, orange, rubicant, henna, bronze and copper burnished, cracked terracotta
and then finally...
bittersweet crumpled brown
what a pallette of cold night air painting daubed on wooded canvas'
life portrayed in leaf-ed glory
all before our autumnal eyes

alessandro
botticelli said
let there be venus
(said
let there be you.)

you
running your hands down your own curves
blind;
the mirrors are all broken here.

it doesn’t matter
if you want this.
i want this
dotted i
(crossed t)
wants this

****
is this, for instance.
a pear:
bruised
muscled like
holy breaststhighs
completely inmoving
(outmoving)
breathe—
celebrate
the words
going upward to the sky and the
strawberry-red hair cascading down
it hungers
(like you)
to touch my back
gently
curl around my shoulders like your cold fingers in January

**** not
skeletal.

let there be
me.

let there be—here is where
the words stop mattering to me—
let there be caramelchocolate skin of sunlit honey tint
melting into itself on the wooden floor
(we all
scream
for ice cream)

titian and
anadyomene me
wringing long wet
raven hair
my legs are covered in salt
sand
once the sea goes dry.

almond eyes
upturned
(angular)

marvel at your own geometry.

lips of salome
drawn upward into a not-yet-smile
(cherubic)

to the women who give their thin
pale bodies
to muscular men with perfect
arms to hold them down:
i am for you.

i
with my
******* that blossom at your winter touch
my thighs
scarred by ivory teeth—no.
i
with
******* in full bloom
(orchids)
thighs sculpted by
God himself
don’t you want to make love to me?
doesn’t the world
want to make
love?


love that tastes
more metallic than the blood behind my lips
don’t you want to bite it out?
taste the sweetness behind them?
run your hands over
the elysian fields of my thighs
and the valley between them
don’t you want
my legs slung over your shoulders
don’t you want
your tongue
on my vast skin
sweat made of sugar
and salt.
(bittersweet)

you want
lips crashed against yours like
w
a ves
eyelashes sweeping your cheeks
you want
don’t you want
me
**** with nothing to cover me but my
blanket of raven hair
for immodesty’s sake!

perhaps
i am (is) small.

but
the mirrors are all broke}n here

horror movie tactic: or the abrupt / concentrated
                                                                              crescendo -
                              the shrill -
the chalk on the blackboard -
                                  all there, horror prime is
not the images,
                       but the music,
                                                  horror is defined by
music - the the lack of -
                           as are epics, with humanity being
inspired rather than ****** -
                and i dare say, i made my first collage worthy of
the aged Matisse: exhibit (a) a newspaper,
(b) a packet of cigarettes,
                       (c) a bottle of whiskey
and finally (d) heidegger's pondering(s) ii - vi;
i told you i was mad enough to buy a copy instead of:
when books are concerned, it's hard to imitate a
taste for designer ware, for a:
        my great grandfather invented / founded so and so...
how easily you can become elitist with books,
a bargain at £30 when usually $60...
                                        and, honestly?
i do feel less snobbish and more powerful,
                 i wield a variation of Egyptology's term:
precious artefact, something from the Third *****,
an intellectual output that doesn't bother Schindler
and the cinematography of the kamiński
red, amongst all the obvious bloodshed -
here's me, some years from the devastation,
feeling insecure about the need to call them Jews
(when they were primarily Poles) to anti,
  to anti justify when the two labels are considered
with variation on the pristine assumed nature of
Israel's policy -
                      sounds different when you consider them
Poles rather than Jews -
                           and here i ventured into the complexity
of thesaurus rex stomping ground the dictionary
keeps reverent - i'm not an Catholic escapist artist,
you won't find any argument to suit my awareness there -
          Jesus can have my writ of concerned antisemitism -
i already said that the tight-rope event by a Frenchman
was and will forever be more spectacular than
the crucifixion -
                                             he was a prophet born
without a conscious involvement in the three magi
and the star of Bethlehem -
                                       i don't believe he was born to be
recipient of a pristine banking on the matter:
         that all depends on how we behaved later,
evidently the Romans respected Jewish c.v.
none were handed down to Roman authorities to
build the coliseum - they were left pristine in their
Pharisee guises, and then the supposed "god" (level
it with the existentialists, the ditto means ~, approx.
or ambiguity, passed down, like a neared concern with
mythology) usurped the religious movements
the Roman respected and never employed the rites
of passage prescribed by Ramses and Nebuchadnezzar;
          or as i continually say:
you rather hear the word ****, or your face being
punched by my fist?
                                       why not, why not talk
***** and keep the *** acts pristine in accordance with
the rule of life? you think that not talking *****
will keep your ****** ******* haloed?
                   for the case of life: i rather talk *******
and **** with effectiveness than
                 put my tongue into a ****** and talk
pretty pretty, and **** like an imbecile...
                                      because i need to become a fuhrer
when she's doing her bit, and i'm doing her bit...
                i equate censoring peasant cordiality with
the things that destroys us: famines, earthquakes etc.,
   with the rise of ****** perversity -
to not talk oath words is as much as talking ******* pretty
and engaging with paedophilia -
                    or something quiet similar to it.
          **** me, talk *****, you don't even have to eat
shellfish: the grand scavengers of the depths -
                      better talk ***** than throw punches
or engage in unspeakable blasphemies;
so why are they trying to make you talk pretty
when you're bound to stuff that **** in your mouth?
you think that will resolve the matter,
thinking *** is ***** thereby enforcing a pristine way
to say hello; really?
              because that's where it's heading -
and it won't do much good when you say:
i can't say akin with the lark what the hell i want,
because another force is rummaging in the same area
saying: i can do what the hell i want, with or without
****** annoying lark singing me onomatopoeia(s)!
              sure, a mind that feels caged will flutter into
ambivalent freedom with the tongue,
       as will a tongue that feels caged flutter into
ambivalent freedom of the tongue:
enter?           a Rothschild -
         have you noticed how things have changed since
Descartes equated the dualism of thought and doubt
as the medium of being?
         apart from Heidegger, the finite increment posit
of what's the centimetres of a person's lifetime?
i think
                1 centimetre
                                        i doubt
                                                       1 centimetre
           precipitates into
                                                i am
                                                                 also, 1 centimetre,
existentialism took the i doubt from the equation
and replaced it with: i deny -
                                                and so called it bad faith...
denial is a subtler version of lying, or perhaps: a more
eloquent expression of it:
       god, i acknowledge the fact that the thesaurus is
an enemy of logic - i.e. close proximity synonyms and
                                      extensively divergent synonyms:
the first tool of rhetoric exposed,
i.e. say red ten times... sure!
      crimson, burgundy, wine, rust,
                      ruby, dahlia, geranium, maroon,
              scarlet, titian
                                               (nouns are primarily synonyms,
their existential purpose is to be synonyms,
   to compensate the existential flaw in Darwinism in
terms of the high tier of variant evolutionary consideration
        and investing in / creating a manageable vocabulary,
kindred of agricultural expertise / -ease, not as suggested
       aesthetic; tee off, a variant wording: games aside,
    but truly a word game, or golf; mankind has staged
the greatest war with its communicative system:
politics v. crosswords: two games - and none are enjoyable,
better leave the games to the symbols 0 - 9);
oh right, d'uh, back to the Rothschild "problem",
                you confront someone like that,
you won't hear a word of doubt, you'll hear the words
of denial... the point is: stunted emotional withdrawal -
just put the whole dynamic into a school playground,
                     people like that can't doubt their actions,
they can only deny them, which is why existentialism
exposed an very emotional variation of cogito ergo sum,
       the sentio ergo sum, or what one calls the Cartesian
extension: c.c.t.v. - like any viral infection: mass paranoia
stemming from a dichotomy rather than a duality
imbued by thinking and acting according to a balance.
the worded confrontation is a summary of a delayed reflex
of the staged confrontation, hence the need for the status of
"the shadow people", to deny and then exert force is
to deny and then to later manipulate certain factors into
an equation: bomb a place, **** anonymous "a", etc.,
             the fact is: it's algebra incorporated into language,
the general concern being about: the nonsense of
a Mr. Smith class system incorporated into all the brickwork
layers of the pyramid...
       sure, a Rothschild will feel vulnerable when question,
and he'll deny rather than doubt, and he'll think his
***** is 1 centimetre tall when ***** and is protruding from
his forehead... but that same person will react with
the "doubt" part of the equation:
                           he'll invest in an arm's deal that will
slaughter ten thousand Colombians over a kilogram
of *******... and he'll then doubt whether those ten thousand
Colombians had social security numbers or passports
or whatever it is they actually had...
                     courtesy?      sure: doubt they ever did anything,
keeps you thinking...
                        deny them the idiotic lie of proxy?
oh sure: they're into higher powers too! don't you know
that evil also works miracles?
                          there are proxy miracles,
are there are immediate miracles of: well, why not be
a saint for the day?
                                 my advice is:
doubt propels thinking, it's an instigator of thinking
  which some call: non-being...
                                but i consider thinking to be a variation
of being:
                                 as in: an aversion to watch a football match
and join a herd...
                       negation? the existential alter to coupling
thinking that's to translate into being?
      &

time passes, does it not,
trickling away in drops, from a leaking tap unnoticed
imperceptible, drops of our days and months that
tsunami into years

we might grow more cynical or wise
we might allow the animals to howl or to transform
or we might eliminate hierarchy and symbolism
and see plain and clear past the allegory
what is left of the experiment
(an unintended one, an unknowing participant even)
the residue, the remains of the years –
what chemical composition do we have?
What has transpired here? -
as clueless as we are of the first expansions
the time when the universes arrive in another cycle;
or perhaps we could see everything in the cocksureness of faith
and drag on, in suspension, leave in doubt or in certainty –
each but a conditioning, a myth,
the truth shrouded in symbol and plainness
O sweet loves,
Time wraps us in its mysterious archaic cyberspace
an inner space that draws a roar, a bark, a howl
and we have justifications, visionary words, systems
to put everything into perspective
like a Titian framed so elegantly in an esteemed museum

My life was stuck in greyscale
Until you came along
With beautiful watercolors.
You painted the skies
With amethyst and sapphire
With coral and azure.
You painted the autumn trees,
With amber and titian
With hazel and maroon.
You flooded the dark oceans
With turquoise and navy.
You sprinkled the grey mountains
With shimmers of flaxen sunlight.
My entire life exploded
Into an exquisite rainbow.

And then you left.
And the radiant world
You had painted for me
Slowly faded
Back into anaemic dust and gloom.

Through olive trees in wooded groves
across sparkling streams swiftly he goes
in a golden chariot that is keenly pulled
by four black Panthers, to the joy of their lord

For this is Dionysus lawgiver wine drinker
god of peace son of Zeus and Persephone
he holds tight the reigns of vine and ivy
to reach the shrine of Apollo finally.

He dismounts his ride still holding his thyrsus
that fennel staff adorned with Ivy poisonous
topped with a titian pine tree cone
here to pay homage to one of his own.

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

My father used to call them
stitches in the ground.
He said they were
just like mine,
only bigger.

Big metal tacks of red-iron,
breaking through the brush
on planks of driftwood,
placed methodically
by his grandfather—
a patriarch I will never meet.

Miles of them,
pacing the landscape,
allowing direction for us to walk.
I asked how the ground
cut itself so bad.
He said it was an accident
just like mine,
only bigger.

I imagined an old man
drubbing stretches of metal
between wood and dirt;
green earth-blood stemmed
by scarred, titian hues.

My father used to call them
stitches in the ground.
He said it after I cut my arm open
so I could feel better about it.

My son is in the hospital
with new stitches.
My father is dead—
a patriarch he will never meet.
The tracks sit stolid
and indifferent;
red and brown between the
buried remnants of timber
stifling the undergrowth.

Repetition is the best petition.
Drive that refrain into your brain.
It’s my mission.
Driven on by Stewart Copeland the musician.
Drums and dance
Send me into a trance.
Transcendental music
Any way you choose it.

Repetition, repetition, repetition
Just as potent as nuclear fission.
Sometimes, for me, it’s just too much.
As crazy as Screaming Lord Sutch.
Yet here I make a telling submission
About the power of repetition
As beautiful as a painting by Titian.
A composition to appeal to your cognition
To get you into a better condition
Without transition.

There are four hundred and ninety rhymes
Of repetition
And that’s not something from superstition.
But I’d better avoid a war of attrition
Even with your kindly permission.
It’s great to prance
And have a dance.
I’m glad you’ve given
This poem a glance
To give its rhythms every chance.
My aim is to enhance
And cut through the boredom like a lance.

Poems are music
Poems are Romance
So let’s advance
Then make a stance.
That’s my position.

Paul Butters

© PB 2\2\2020 (first line written 31\1 then notes made 1\2). Final line added 3\2.

stygian nights
and i peer into the sky,
contemplating the planets that sail
round and round on riverboats
in their titian skin.

and i bet their bone structures
have collapsed by now
as they breathe aside the sun,
but they know they need to spin
and spin because they are the only ones
left untouchable in this world.

and i'm glad there's something to look up to
because sometimes my fingertips reach
to grasp the orbs,
stretch to feel some sort of purity
adorning my dirtied soul.
and sometimes i lift my face skyward
to let my eyes drink
the same silver water
the planets glide across.

i dream that i can feel the stars
settling on the corners of my eyes
and i dream that ebony night quietly explodes
between my bones
until when i awaken beneath the streetlights.
i swear i can feel the night slip like liquid sand
through my fingertips.

and god, i need you. i need you.
because only when the moon
enlightens my palms can i see the
maps pressed to my skin.

and without the stars draping light
across my cheeks,
a sleepy black curls around my ankles
and follows me to bed.

i guess i'm made of stark marrow
and naked ocean eyes,
pale in comparison to your lovely sinews.

but that's why i need you.

i need you to
break through my windowsill each sundown
and play my skin like an instrument.
spill sonatas through each corner of the world,
because with you alive
and with me breathing and laughing
i will feel whole.

stagnant nights and i peer into the sky
contemplating the planets that sail round
and round on riverboats in their titian-streaked
skin. and i bet their bone structures have
collapsed by now as they breathe aside the
sun, but they know they need to spin and spin
because they are the only ones left untouchable
in this world.

and i’m glad there’s something to
look up to because sometimes my fingertips
reach to grasp the orbs, stretch to feel some
sort of purity adorning my dirtied soul and i lift
my face skyward to let my eyes drink the same
silver water the planets glide across.

sometimes
i dream that i can feel the stars settling on the
corners of my eyes and ebony night quietly
exploding between my bones until when i
awaken beneath the streetlights i swear i
can feel the night slip like liquid sand between
my fingertips.

god i need you, i need you, because
only when the moon enlightens my palms can
i see the maps pressed to my skin, and without
the stars draping light across my cheeks, a
sleepy black curls around my ankles and i
do not know where to go.

and i guess i’m made of naked ocean eyes and
stark marrow, pale in comparison to your
lovely sinews, but that’s why i need you. i need
you to break through my windowsill each
sundown and play my skin like an instrument,
spill sonatas through each corner of the world
because with you alive and with me breathing
and laughing i will feel
whole.

Petrified for the last time,
I cut my brittle heart out
with a pair of nail scissors,
clipping through the keratin
down to the quick —
the sharp, thick, constant sting
of raw flesh, ribs spread
to see the moist, shady maw,
the red, white, and blue
empty ring box of my lungs,
a “yes”
like soft velour, all
tumescent and convex, pressed
out with the fragments
of vitreous gifts
you poured down my windpipe
(unintentionally vitriolic),
gem shards, cold and hard,
and I am scarified inside out.

My heart, airlifted
from its zone of alienation,
wails and trails lank Titian locks,
a red forest, scorched and floored.
Still, the dead marble lump glows red
and ***** like blood under nails.
You are subdermal —
eternally, infernally so.
Put apples in my cheeks, speak
but do not
listen, I glisten —
first with sweat, then tears,
then soap suds. I shed
my skin, touch fresh markings,
milk patterns. Half blossomed
rose bud,
dismantled, curling
up on myself,

you’re out of the woods.
I pull up my hood, drag my feet
out of the mud, bind
my open chest with the rest
of my ruddy cloak and,
sanguine, let drop my spleen
into the puddle I leave
behind, all dark
with blood and bark. Your bite
is not so bad
but, oh darling,
what big teeth you have.

Nadine was naïve when she came to me,
So innocent, fresh and sublime,
I found that I had to pinch myself
When she told me she was mine.
She was barely out of her teens back then
While I was over the hill,
She hadn’t a toe in the water then,
But I had been through the mill.

Her gentle face was a study in grace
And her eyes had sparkled blue,
Her hair like a field of waving corn
And her lips had glistened dew,
Her ******* were fresh, pushed under her dress
And her hips a promised world,
I’d watch her sway as she’d drift my way
This seductive, sensuous girl.

I’d lie on the bed after making love
And I’d watch her rise and move,
She’d pose for me in her poetry
Like a picture, hung in the Louvre.
She was never ashamed of her body then
Though she lent it just to me,
The rest of the world was missing out,
It was pure idolatry.

I’d take her walking to see the sites
Where culture lurked in the gloom,
And art then captured her simple heart
As we’d go from room to room,
Rubens, Goya and Cabanel,
Titian, Goya, Courbet,
She said, ‘I want to be seen like that,
Preserved in a youthful way.’

We met the sculptor, Matthias Krohn
At a gallery in Berlin,
His mouth fell open to see Nadine
With her pale and perfect skin.
‘You have a goddess, my friend,’ he said,
‘I must capture her in stone!’
I said, ‘Can I come along and watch?’
‘I must work with her alone.’

I’d drop Nadine at his studio
Each day, and she’d stay ‘til four,
I’d ask her how it was going, and
She’d shrug, wouldn’t tell me more.
‘The sculpture’s facing away from me
I won’t see it ‘til it’s done.’
I could tell by the downcast look of her
That it wasn’t really fun.

‘It’s cold, it gets very cold in there,’
She said, when a month had gone
And that was the first time that I knew
She was posed, no clothing on.
‘I thought he would drape your figure there,
In something filmy, like lawn,
‘I told him I wanted the world to see me
Naked as I was born.’

The months went on, there was something wrong
The sparkle had gone from her eye,
The hair that had been like waving corn
Was now just brittle and dry,
Her lips were pursed in a moody line,
No longer glistened with dew,
I said, ‘Am I doing something wrong…’
‘It’s nothing to do with you!’

I went on the final day with her,
Matthias ushered us in,
‘You’ve come for my greatest masterpiece,’
But all I could see was sin.
The eyes were cynical, looking down,
The lips were curled in contempt,
The ******* were pert like a blatant flirt
Who basked in her element.

I took one look at the parted legs
And reached for my girl, Nadine,
The tears were streaming along her cheeks,
‘You’ve made me appear unclean!’
Matthias shrugged as she rushed on out,
‘It’s true to the girl I saw.’
‘Your evil eyes must have told you lies,
You’ve turned Nadine to a *****!’

She never came back to our home again,
She wandered the streets in shame,
I tried to find her, to track her down
But I heard she was on the game.
I saw her last, get into a car,
Her lips were curled in contempt,
Her hair was brittle, like faded straw
But she looked in her element!

David Lewis Paget

You said my art was verse,
But I knew my art was you,
It was simple, it didn't rhyme,

It didn't need to.

I spill out my thoughts every night...
I do it to chronicle everything we say to each other,
The tiny interactions that are thawing my heart that I'd rather not forget.

You see, my brain isn't made like yours,
And there are gaps in my past.

Like Michelangelo did carve his marble or Rodin did shape his mass of bronze, I shape my words so I cannot forget these steps that I take,

One by one with you.

I interpreted Rembrandt as Sadness.
I interpreted van Gogh as Suffering.
I interpreted Titian without Sincerity.
I interpret you simply as Love.

You are art, you do not know.

I don't remember all the paintings I've seen,
And if you are to fade along with them, I'd prefer to fade as well.

My Titian SEED
Masterawesome03
3
Bubba
TDR
All code for my baby boy
a total package like none other
athletic and bright
the second you came into this world
the sun appeared intensely more bright
Canadian-American-Multicultural young man
raised in conditions with trials at hand
I miss our bond (father and son)
I miss your hugs (for my soul)
I miss your laugh (to brighten my day)
I miss the summers of endless play
My SEED of love and joy you are
endless pride I feel as you grow
I am blessed of all fathers am I

What goes up must come down.

It's the law of gravity.

You throw a ball up into the air and what does it do?

It falls right back down towards the ground at the acceleration of 9.81m/s2

It’s the exact acceleration of anything in freefall,
Despite its weight or mass
Despite its shape or value
It falls right back to the ground at 9.81m/s2

So specific.

Well yes.
Yes, because it is important for you to understand this principle of behavior.

You see, the same law occurs in life.

Let’s pretend you were a ball, and I threw you up in the air…

I threw you up so high that you could see the birds and touch the clouds.
I threw you so high that you were gathered up in a breeze, taken across the entirety of the city.
I threw you so high that you were enveloped into a storm, tossed and turned in the wind and rain.
I threw you so high that you emerged from the chaos and floated above the atmosphere.

At this point, you’ve stopped.

For the briefest of moments, you're exposed to one of the most stunning of natural masterpieces.
The sky is painted a pretty titian shade spotted with drops of fuchsia and indigo
The sun shines and sparkles in your peripheral view, glinting and gleaming off of your rounded form.
A heavenly phenomenon.

Yet what goes up, must always come down
And after the briefest of moments, you fall.

You fall right back through the treacherous storms, being pushed forcefully by the wind
You fall right back down towards the heart of the city, tumbling in the breeze
You fall right back down through the clouds and past the birds
You fall right back down until you reach the ground and your journey comes to an end.

Your life comes to an end.

While in the air, you were exposed to a multitude of different situations and scenarios.
You saw beauty and chaos
You were really living.

But in the end, gravity takes its course.

Life takes its course.

Because all that lives must die,

And all that goes up must come down.