The clime where Quito since hath rear’d her fanes,
And now no more her barbarous rites maintains.
He saw these vales in richer blooms array’d,
And tribes more numerous haunt the woodland shade…

Yet softer fires his daring views control,
And mixt emotions fill his changing soul.
Shall genius rare, that might the world improve,
Bend to the milder voice of careless love,
That bounds his glories, and forbids to part
From bowers that woo’d his fluctuating heart?
Or shall the toils imperial heroes claim
Fire his brave ***** with a patriot flame,
Bid sceptres wait him on Peruvia’s shore,
And loved Oella meet his eyes no more?

Sudden his near approach the maid alarms;
He flew enraptured to her yielding arms,
And lost, dissolving in a softer flame,
His distant empire and the fire of fame.
At length, retiring thro the homeward field,
Their glowing souls to cooler converse yield;
O’er various scenes of blissful life they ran,
When thus the warrior to the maid began:
Long have we mark’d the inauspicious reign
That waits our sceptre in this rough domain;
A soil ungrateful and a wayward race,
Their game but scanty, and confined their space.
Where late my steps the southern war pursued,
The fertile plains grew boundless as I view’d;
More numerous nations trod the grassy wild,
And joyous nature more delightful smiled…

To Vincent Buckley

Since all our keys are lost or broken,
Shall it be thought absurd
If for an art of words I turn
Discreetly to the Word?

Drawn inward by his love, we trace
Art to its secret springs:
What, are we masters in Israel
And do not know these things?

Lord Christ from out his treasury
Brings forth things new and old:
We have those treasures in earthen vessels,
In parables he told,

And in the single images
Of seed, and fish, and stone,
Or, shaped in deed and miracle,
To living poems grown.

Scorn then to darken and contract
The landscape of the heart
By individual, arbitrary
And self-expressive art.

Let your speech be ordered wholly
By an intellectual love;
Elucidate the carnal maze
With clear light from above.

Give every image space and air
To grow, or as bird to fly;
So shall one grain of mustard-seed
Quite overspread the sky.

Let your literal figures shine
With pure transparency:
Not in opaque but limpid wells
Lie truth and mystery.

And universal meanings spring
From what the proud pass by:
Only the simplest forms can hold
A vast complexity.

We know, where Christ has set his hand
Only the real remains:
I am impatient for that loss
By which the spirit gains.

Beatniks got hip until hippies got beat
by their own rock’n’roll and by riot cops
as they made love and war in field and street:
spoiled rebel children, psychedelic flops
who thought their youth made them immune
to lies from gods that pipe that tune.

Beatniks leaned first toward hip existential,
breaking out of the fifties mental mold.
Culture’s Petri dish turned pestilential;
drugs, deviance and rebellion: dull as old.
Yet novel did it ever seem
to souls exploited for their dream.

The Hippies took that bongo tea-house scene;
added acid’s naked technicolor:
freak-outs, love-ins, the normalized obscene;
politics of outrage, now made duller.
Impulsivity their passion.
(Sin is never out of fashion.)

Youth’s dissident victory incomplete
they glimpsed on flowery fields of battle
kaleidoscopic visions of defeat:
the psychedelic baby’s death-rattle.
Allen Ginsberg’s perverted freak.
Now reached its Himalayan peak.

Trace back in time this cultural malaise;
the poisoned sources where doubt first enticed.
In retrospect we diagnose their ways:
anti-God, anti-family, anti-Christ.
Oh no, you say; that was just youth—
we had to follow our own truth.

What did we learn in your San Fran cafés
poetically dense in plume-clouds of smoke?
That arty nihilism’s just a phase
and transgression of morals a tired joke.
(The Man will always make a buck
off fools who live to smoke and ****.)

That mystic idols are not Truth . . .
blown minds will never save a soul;
Faith and Wisdom, both alien to youth,
in child’s-play, play a minor role.

That beats burn out and hippies age;
we’re no wiser for their excess.
Unwashed ravings, Bohemian rage
contain no truths—much less, success.

What did they teach us while tripping and ****** ?
Could it nourish at all, their cosmic brew—
their cult of youth, their dying gods bemoaned,
their howls, their road trips, their breakings on through?

Only this, Daddy-O — now dig my writ;
my be-boppin’ speed rant, my acid rock:
that drug-addled rebels who scrawl half-lit
fumble with a key that cannot unlock.

So many people have come and gone . . .
their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on—
as clear as the sun in the summer sky
                                                     BOSTON
                                                          ­                                                                 ­ 

Your name remains: a magic word
to conjure nights of springs long-gone.
I muse upon your face, alone
and find my heaven's hope deferred.
Since unpoetic life occurred,
Romance has gilded scenes long dead.
Nostalgic memory has fed
the embers of a fire you stirred.
You turned and walked out of my days.
I never heard your voice again.
Yet memories of you amaze
Engraved in my adoring brain.
In labyrinths we wonder free
to meet again eventually.

(Is this poem better in decasyllables . . .  ?
I need some feedback.)

                 Name of a City

Your name remains with me. A magic word
To conjure nights and scents of springs long-gone.
I muse upon your tawny face, alone
And find my heaven's hope now long–deferred.
Since unpoetic life and age occurred,
Romance has gilded scenes that lie long dead.
Nostalgic memory of you has fed
The smoldering embers of a fire you stirred.
One spring, you turned and walked out of my days.
I never heard your feline voice again.
Yet memories of you, intense, amaze
Engraved for good in my adoring brain...
On, through the labyrinths, we wander free
To meet in time again, celestially.

†           †           †    

When the ****** lost souls are voided
into the abyss of hell
I hope to have avoided
that last death-knell.

The blood of Christ assures me
that such can be admitted.
I pray it sanctifies me –
desires permitted.

They preach of joy unending
of sheer expanding praise,
but the unseen evidence lingers:
my carnal ways:

I flash on astral hotties
(the flames that life denied)
among celestial bodies
beyond the great divide.

I muse on raptured virgins;
Christ’s parables made flesh
and my unspoken longings
unveiled and fresh.

I long to know profoundly
the promised stellar faces –
or sleep so deep,  so soundly
no dreams leave traces.

My hopes for that dimension
alloyed with base designs
grow vague. Incomprehension
misreads the signs.

That Robert Mueller
Was such a pleasant young man
Cold stone wall, no soul

I glimpsed the Grail
Removed her mail:
And there beheld an epic tale:

Chivalric odes
With knightly codes
And brave Arthurian episodes . . .

Revealing there
Her essence bare
I touched on divers themes most fair.

The gauntlet flung,
My canto sung,
I read her poem—with my tongue.

My lady-squire
Upon her sire
Now reaped her harvest of desire.

My milk-white steed
Traversed her mead
And she dismounted, free indeed.

Fresh love consumed,
Our quest resumed;
Ideals of chivalry entombed.

Haunted by hate of your president,
you froth as you rage like a demon;
setting a dangerous precedent
urged on by the likes of Don Lemon.

Your sinister soul is now evident
and the hatred you spew is obscene.
You have swilled, with the thirst of a malcontent
vicious words from the well of Maxine.

You're possessed now by hate of your president,
while the minions are taken to task;
you dismiss every mob as a non-event—
but we see you behind the dark mask.

⚓    ⚓    ⚓

Name that metaphor (half-assed boating)

Polish the brass on your life preserver

Wring out some meaning for dockside observer

Moorings are tenuous; life is floating.

Definers of terms gain control.
To maintain you enchained is their goal.
Your Normie-morality
(conventionality)
tightens their grip on your soul.

Behold your public funds at work:
Trash-strewn gutters, loitering thugs;
Sidewalk dancers start to twerk
While tattooed clowns deal circus drugs.

Social workers check the pulse
In clouds of menace: sick-sweet smoke.
The cities brain and guts convulse:
Mad laughter for an absent joke.

Such Godless faces, Christless souls
Whose gazes show malign defeat
Evoke dysfunction. On it rolls:
A harsh, reptilian urban beat.

The ghosts of absent fathers fade
In methadone . . . the guttural yells
Infect the *****-reeking shade
Of demons bound in welfare hells.

America—reduced to this.
Fragmented, begging for repair.
A vicious and unkind abyss
Beyond all hope and all despair.

I want to flee such streets of noise
Where fate is read in scraps of trash
When sirens urge the circus boys
To pocket their illicit cash.

Of RINOS, I'm not such a fan, sir...
and I offer no delicate answer.
The rhinoceros-brain
of that war-hawk McCain
tries to coo like a dove—but it can't, sir

Human shields
Mothers go first
Honduran fields
The plan rehearsed
Fake refugees
Who storm the gates
More borders, please
Trump hesitates . . .

Jane Turell (1708–1735)

COME, gentle muse, and once more lend thine aid,
O bring thy succor to a humble maid!
How often dost thou liberally dispense
To our dull breast thy quick’ning influence!
By thee inspired, I’ll cheerful tune my voice,
And love and sacred friendship make my choice.
In my pleased ***** you can freely pour,
A greater treasure than Jove’s *******.
Come now, fair muse, and fill my empty mind,
With rich ideas, great and unconfin’d.
Instruct me in those secret arts that lie
Unseen to all but to a poet’s eye.
O let me burn with Sappho’s noble fire,
But not like her for faithless man expire.
And let me rival great Orinda’s fame,
Or like sweet Philomela’s be my name.
Go lead the way, my muse, nor must you stop
Till we have gain’d Parnassus’ shady top:
Till I have view’d those fragrant soft retreats,
Those fields of bliss, the muses’ sacred seats.
I’ll then devote thee to fair virtue’s fame,
And so be worthy of a poet’s name.

Reflections on Psalm 97

Good Shepherd? He's more a flame-thrower...
this reaper who doubles as sower.
While His psalms hold our gaze
Holy fires will blaze...
He remains an unknown to the knower.

Though the psalmist prophetically blazed,
some residual doubts are still raised:
the good shepherd and sower
now armed with flame-thrower
both scorches—and leaves one amazed.

Our Lord is a reaper and sower
Spreading light via holy flame-thrower.
While His readership gazed
expectations were razed:
there were less burning standards to lower.

Walter Becker  b. Feb 20, 1950 - d. Sept 3, 2017


With stocking face I bought a gun
The plan was set the plan was done...
Looked at my watch and started for the door
Now the food here ain't so good no more
And they closed the package store...

[Chorus]
Love your mama, love your brother
Love 'em till they run for cover
Turn the light off, keep your shirt on
Cry a jag on me

Oh Michael Oh Jesus
you know I'm not to blame
You know my reputation
for playing a good clean game
Oh Michael Oh Jesus
I'll keep my promise when
You turn that heartbeat over again

My poison's named you know my brand
So please make mine a double, Sam
Stir it up nice I'll eat it right here
This highway runs from Paraguay
And I've just come all the way

[Chorus]

We warned the corpse of William Wright
Not to cuss and drink all night
Ticket in hand I saw him laid to rest
But zombie see and zombie do
He's here with me and you

Monkey Pox! The Monkey Pox!
Get more boosters, change your locks.
Have wild *** without a ******;
Block the fandom. Burn the kingdom.
Gambian rats are not to blame—
Trump supporters own the shame:
White extremists, spreading plague,
for reasons that, as yet, are vague . . .

Many worldlings (whose ways we bemoan)
hope their lives we’ll approve and condone.
But we couldn’t care less
for the views they profess;
we just wish they would leave us alone

What a lovely royal wedding it was
such lavish costumes and oh
such elegant extravagance.
I just LOVE Windsor weddings don't you?
Did you see her curtsy the princess the princess
did you see the Queen Mother the Queen Mother with the prince?
They brought the cake by carriage the cake by carriage
Sir Elton performed (he's black you know) Sir Elton
Did you see the groom and his gang?

Did you see the video of the 14 year-old
gang-***** by the Pakistani thugs?
Did you hear when they arrested Tommy R?
Did you taste the victim
ground into kebab in Blackpool?

Don't you just LOVE England; it's so
brilliant. It's so telly . . . it's so
totally brilliantly totalitarian ☺

Jeffrey Epstein is gone. Suicided?
The conclusion is still undecided.
A libidinous god . . .
or a jewel for Mossad?
The tribunal is deeply divided.

Mr Epstein is gone... wonder where.
Is he dead? All conjecture is fair.
Was that him on the slab?
We all hoped we would blab;
his declassified secrets to share.

You predictable communists rant,
your lobotomized zombies may chant.
But the people for Trump
are now over the ****.
You'd depose him, we know...  but you can't.

PS:
"** **, Hey Hey - Donald Trump has got to stay!"

Dull Dionysiac, ex-Nihilist,

musing on my poorly-played roles now past,

my acts sincere and earnest—but half-assed,

I raved, an irrelevant dramatist.

Misguided former friends and I the cast;

We took our bow, Life stirred, woke up and hissed.

Such hallucinogenic scenes: not missed;

our play a farce, the curtain came down fast.

Recalling useless states I once achieved,

hampered by those intensities once known,

remembering what was beheld, believed,

the trip came to an end; I woke alone.

Frenzy is unsustainable. One learns

to be wary of realms where vision burns.

No quiero culito mierdoso
Con fragancia fea del pecado.
Mejor un trasero glorioso
Con belleza y vida mostrado.

No me gustan las nalgas sucias;
Con olor a humanidad–
Yo las quiero con ricas astucias
Y fragancia de la libertad.

LO! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently —

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —

Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —

Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of scultured ivy and stone flowers —

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol’s diamond eye —

Not the gaily-jewelled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed;

For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass —

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea —

No heavings hint that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave — there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrown aside,

In slightly sinking, the dull tide —

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy Heaven.

The waves have now a redder glow —

The hours are breathing faint and low —

And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence.

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

Thence simple bards, by simple prudence taught,
To this wise town by simple patrons brought,
In simple manner utter simple lays,
And take, with simple pensions, simple praise.
Waft me, some Muse, to Tweed’s inspiring stream,
Where all the little Loves and Graces dream;
Where, slowly winding, the dull waters creep,
And seem themselves to own the power of sleep;
Where on the surface lead, like feathers, swims;
There let me bathe my yet unhallow’d limbs,
As once a Syrian bathed in Jordan’s flood—
Wash off my native stains, correct that blood
Which mutinies at call of English pride,
And, deaf to prudence, rolls a patriot tide.
From solemn thought which overhangs the brow
Of patriot care, when things are—God knows how;
From nice trim points, where Honour, slave to Rule,
In compliment to Folly, plays the fool [. . .]

Career churchmen, paid to guide
lead new-found converts to abide
in dull consumeristic stupor,
promises of living water
vanishing like desert pools
and luring onwards thirsty fools
who glimpse oases, there to find
dry carcasses of humankind
evaporation, drought and death.
You think you found it? Save your breath.
The springs of life become a puddle
where theologies befuddle:
muddy, stagnant, barely damp
how different from St. Jacob’s camp
where heaven opened in a dream—
unlike this churchy marketing scheme.

Strike this cloud we labor under !
Let it pour. Let Luther thunder.
Where is Calvin’s sovereign grace
and where the omnipresent face
of Christ enthroned in holy splendor ?
When will our divine defender
clear the record, end confusion
bring to a final, just conclusion
Babel, His dismembered body—
(can I get a witness, anybody?)

Leave your hair the way God made it.
Keep it natural. Why try to
Straighten, curl, dye, tint or fade it
As if your Lord were one to lie to—
While you copy that silly look
From someone else's beauty book.

If your tresses, dark by nature
You decide to bleach to gold,
Oh dear vain and fickle creature,
You've believed the lies you're sold.
Low on info, you lost the plot
By not esteeming what you've got.

Cut it any way you please to.
Braid it, if you're so inclined;
But do refrain from paying fees to
Color-tinters fit to blind:
Day-glo green, fake blonde, bright blues
Are strange and nauseating hues.

Take an harp, go about the city,
thou harlot that hast been forgotten;
make sweet melody, sing many songs,
that thou mayest be remembered.
                         Isaiah 23:16  (KJV)

Morrison, Hendrix and Janis the J.
(with others lost tripping along the way)
continue to enlighten young stoners,
adolescent existential loners
who hold them as holy and dig their writ
in billows of ****-smoke. Listen to it:
Hendrix and Joplin and Morrison, man
were part of some cosmic, like, master-plan
true prophets—thus sayeth The Lizard King.
High as kites, their disciples hear them sing
suburban anthems to teen perdition
sirens of drug-addled sixties vision.
pockets continue to empty for discs
while taking somewhat calculated risks.
Should vomitous overdose be esteemed
with visions that actual prophets dreamed?
These anointed cherubs of sad excess
can never illuminate, much less bless
a nation of youth who have lost their way
and can't even choose which download to play.
Morrison, man—that dude was so profound
he broke on through to that state where I'm bound...
Moon-struck drummers, now ghosts of dubious name
live on, in pounding out their spectral fame;
exploding dirigibles flown too high
and blown to pieces in Lucifer's sky.
Such riffs and licks and solos and visions
should force us to some unkind decisions
wherein we ask how free we really are
when enslaved to a devil's fallen star.

Al Shabab having terrorist fits
while Nairobi is taking the hits.
An attack calculated
by gunmen, frustrated
for lack of Somalian *****...

My Soul, there is a country
Afar beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skillful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger
Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend
And (O my Soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flow’r of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure,
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

Of fatal head-wounds, beasts, and kings
my holy muse, avenging, sings
and mocking, scorns
the ten kings’ horns
while greater wisdom brings.

Divide ten horns on seven heads;
numeric challenge overspreads . . .
Ten for seven ?
Thus does Heaven
plan to up your meds.

Seven candlesticks, vials of wrath
first lit, then poured, shall light your path
toward paradise;
and shall suffice
in holy aftermath.

Such Hebrew numerology:
an Antichrist apology.
No death in vain.
Those babies slain?
Pure semiology.

You come with true prophetic zeal
the Revelation to unseal;
and yet, I doubt
what you’re about . . .
you need a balanced meal.

Nutcase: extraordinary
measures may prove necessary.
Vitamin B
deficiency
turns you visionary.

Good supplements might help your brain
and God Himself perhaps might deign
to grant some light
and ease your plight
till truth and love remain.

Go, crack the Book. Let us resume
the cryptic parable of doom;
Saint John raving
(text worth saving)
lightens the End-Time gloom.

Voice of many waters’ thunder
barely startles . . . on we blunder.
Shut up and buy—
demystify
as barbarians plunder.

Of jeweled harlots, rising wars
and opening of infernal doors,
near-psychotic
occult logic
breeds the juggernaut spores.

Those seven churches, now long-gone,
return once more in light of dawn.
Prophetic ghosts
in ****** hosts
give birth: prophetic spawn.

The fabled fornication-wine,
unholy, though no less divine . . .
we drain the cup—
our time is up;
all hail the Lord’s design.

Archetypal memes of madness:
slaughtered saints revive with gladness
the slain lamb’s life
brings end to strife
and closure to our mess.  

Sharpen your dull Christology,
fanatic eschatology:
void of logic—
semiotic
misanthropology . . .  

Delta of the dark Euphrates:
something from the bowels of Hades
issues forth
to test the worth
of Babylon’s ladies.

Cool out, my brother. Close the book.
It’s not the end yet; take a look.
Glimpse the city—
what a pity . . .
omens have got you shook.

These frightening prophetic screeds
should urge you more toward Christian deeds;
not satanic
modes of panic,
but meeting human needs.

The predatory drones of war,
infernal technoids from the core
of smoking earth
are finally worth
their scrap—and little more.

A desert woman clothed with sun;
Abaddon’s legions on the run
as they retreat,
admit defeat:
the Devil’s doings, done.

The reign of Antichrist now ends
the host of heaven, triumphant, rends
satanic skies;
before our eyes
the Bride, adorned, descends.

And though my muse shall never quit,
her inspiration lags a bit;
apostates curse,
the world grows worse—
the Devil throws a fit.

Of beasts and fatal head-wounds healed
and wrathful angel’s scrolls unsealed
I’ve had enough,
and call God’s bluff:
Apocalypse revealed.

Another false prophet, another beast --
Another peace process for the Middle East . . .
Another massacre, a newer war;
A bright new scarlet global *****.
Another poem, another curse
A further plunge from worst to worse . . .
Another sociopathic brute,
Another ***** in a business suit.
Another smiling psychopath;
Another angel's bowl of wrath
Another data-driven plan
To twist yet further fallen man . . .
A bolder data-driven lie
As LUCIFER ascends the sky,
Another depression, another bust--
In MAMMON we supremely TRUST !

Let us all imbibe of that cold Yuengling.
(a noble past, a good taste, a nice ring.)
The buzz, even more so—for it will bring
Massive spasmodic leftist tantruming;
Mad hilarious virtue-signaling . . .
Frothing fizzing Trump derangement freaking !

Finally justice is done, and it passes
enraging the Socialist masses.
They’ve appointed a judge
and we won’t hold a grudge—
we’ll just pray that they round up your *****.