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Poems

1.

One Day the Amarous Lisander,
By an impatient Passion sway'd,
Surpris'd fair Cloris, that lov'd Maid,
Who cou'd defend her self no longer ;
All things did with his Love conspire,
The gilded Planet of the Day,
In his gay Chariot, drawn by Fire,
War now descending to the Sea,
And left no Light to guide the World,
But what from Cloris brighter Eves was hurl'd.

2.

In alone Thicket, made for Love,
Silent as yielding Maids Consent,
She with a charming Languishment
Permits his force, yet gently strove ?
Her Hands his ***** softly meet,
But not to put him back design'd,
Rather to draw him on inclin'd,
Whilst he lay trembling at her feet;
Resistance 'tis to late to shew,
She wants the pow'r to sav -- Ah!what do you do?

3.

Her bright Eyes sweat, and yet Severe,
Where Love and Shame confus'dly strive,
Fresh Vigor to Lisander give :
And whispring softly in his Ear,
She Cry'd -- Cease -- cease -- your vain desire,
Or I'll call out -- What wou'd you do ?
My dearer Honour, ev'n to you,
I cannot -- must not give -- retire,
Or take that Life whose chiefest part
I gave you with the Conquest of my Heart.

4.

But he as much unus'd to fear,
As he was capable of Love,
The blessed Minutes to improve,
Kisses her Lips, her Neck, her Hair !
Each touch her new Desires alarms !
His burning trembling Hand he prest
Upon her melting Snowy Breast,
While she lay panting in his Arms !
All her unguarded Beauties lie
The Spoils and Trophies of the Enemy.

5.

And now, without Respect or Fear,
He seeks the Objects of his Vows ;
His Love no Modesty allows :
By swift degrees advancing where
His daring Hand that Alter seiz'd,
Where Gods of Love do Sacrifice ;
That awful Throne, that Paradise,
Where Rage is tam'd, and Anger pleas'd ;
That Living Fountain, from whose Trills
The melted Soul in liquid Drops distils.

6.

Her balmy Lips encountring his,
Their Bodies as their Souls are joyn'd,
Where both in Transports were confin'd,
Extend themselves upon the Moss.
Cloris half dead and breathless lay,
Her Eyes appear'd like humid Light,
Such as divides the Day and Night;
Or falling Stars, whose Fires decay ;
And now no signs of Life she shows,
But what in short-breath-sighs returns and goes.

7.

He saw how at her length she lay,
He saw her rising ***** bare,
Her loose thin Robes, through which appear
A Shape design'd for Love and Play;
Abandon'd by her Pride and Shame,
She do's her softest Sweets dispence,
Offring her ******-Innocence
A Victim to Loves Sacred Flame ;
Whilst th' or'e ravish'd Shepherd lies,
Unable to perform the Sacrifice.

8.

Ready to taste a Thousand Joys,
Thee too transported hapless Swain,
Found the vast Pleasure turn'd to Pain :
Pleasure, which too much Love destroys !
The willing Garments by he laid,
And Heav'n all open to his view ;
Mad to possess, himself he threw
On the defenceless lovely Maid.
But oh ! what envious Gods conspire
To ****** his Pow'r, yet leave him the Desire !

9.

Natures support, without whose Aid
She can no humane Being give,
It self now wants the Art to live,
Faintness it slacken'd Nerves invade :
In vain th' enraged Youth assaid
To call his fleeting Vigour back,
No Motion 'twill from Motion take,
Excess of Love his Love betray'd ;
In vain he Toils, in vain Commands,
Th' Insensible fell weeping in his Hands.

10.

In this so Am'rous cruel strife,
Where Love and Fate were too severe,
The poor Lisander in Despair,
Renounc'd his Reason with his Life.
Now all the Brisk and Active Fire
That should the Nobler Part inflame,
Unactive Frigid, Dull became,
And left no Spark for new Desire ;
Not all her Naked Charms cou'd move,
Or calm that Rage that had debauch'd his Love.

11.

Cloris returning from the Trance
Which Love and soft Desire had bred,
Her tim'rous Hand she gently laid,
Or guided by Design or Chance,
Upon that Fabulous Priapus,
That Potent God (as Poets feign.)
But never did young Shepherdess
(Garth'ring of Fern upon the Plain)
More nimbly draw her Fingers back,
Finding beneath the Verdant Leaves a Snake.

12.

Then Cloris her fair Hand withdrew,
Finding that God of her Desires
Disarm'd of all his pow'rful Fires,
And cold as Flow'rs bath'd in the Morning-dew.
Who can the Nymphs Confusion guess ?
The Blood forsook the kinder place,
And strew'd with Blushes all her Face,
Which both Disdain and Shame express ;
And from Lisanders Arms she fled,
Leaving him fainting on the gloomy Bed.

13.

Like Lightning through the Grove she hies,
Or Daphne from the Delphick God ;
No Print upon the Grassie Road
She leaves, t' instruct pursuing Eyes.
The Wind that wanton'd in her Hair,
And with her ruffled Garments plaid,
Discover'd in the flying Maid
All that the Gods e're made of Fair.
So Venus, when her Love was Slain,
With fear and haste flew o're the fatal Plain.

14.

The Nymphs resentments, none but I
Can well imagin, and Condole ;
But none can guess Lisander's Soul,
But those who sway'd his Destiny :
His silent Griefs, swell up to Storms,
And not one God, his Fury spares,
He Curst his Birth, his Fate, his Stars,
But more the Shepherdesses Charms ;
Whose soft bewitching influence,
Had ****'d him to the Hell of Impotence.
janelflorendx Jan 2017
i saw you
i saw your fiery eyes
it was like looking into a cup 
unstoppably filling up to its brim
yours, abundantly filled with vehement grim

so uneasy it was conjecturing your mind
gave me a reason to unwind for a little while
tell my why
all the pretends and quiet sighs, enshrouding whats from behind
what it is there inside
why do you need to hide


thy precious heart with no choice
but to turn itself into an agitated smoldered iron

strengthened  heart, furnished like art
you are a burning metal amenably hammered by many foes
far more drowned with the empty souls

where are you, where is the real you
how did your soul turn so blue
let me condole
drilling poles amidst the cold
rendering you a hand and something to hold

I will find yours
along with all the lost
long hoarfrost
waiting to be accost
along with the alley of souls
growling down the holes
in line, next to mine
unleash a shine, your spirit so divine

let your caliginosity be replaced
all be thy grace shall be embraced
this time, fearlessly
without minds controlling slavery
cutting the negativity and
ignoring life's declivity

see yourself walking through the flame
no more lames
without the shame and doubt getting burnt
stepping on with something learnt

now you are changed, well-transformed,
someone born to aspire,  died meant to inspire,
honey you are retrofire, firing in the night sky
but not as heaping as an empty pyre
but as fierce as an enraging forest fire
Terry O'Leary Oct 2013
I’m stealing through a twilit realm, the ancient pale of Whereis,
passing chambers of an Heiress
(though no need to feel embarrassed)
through a magic mystic mirror hanging curtainless.

A glimpse near naked alleyways (denuded by the moon) ex-
poses Ghosts in gauzy tunics
carving symbols, round and runic,
in distended dingy dungeons of uncertainness.

Down misty streets of cobblestone – ancestral avenues –
patchwork paths consume my shoes
(chasing foggy curlicues
twisting, twirling by in twos,
floating anywhere they choose),
leaving footprints that confuse
vagrant wispy retinues
of the threaded wooden sticks that stalk a Puppet wandering.

Condensed in drops of fantasy, distilled in evening dew,
shifting Shadows I pursue
(wearing faces I once knew,
slipping slowly from my view)
turn their backs to bid adieu
leaving stars to tempt me through
Awful Tower residues
mocking treasures time outgrew
in the birth of old from new
framing pageants in review
midst the visions of the painted past I can’t help pondering.

Contorted candelabra claw the skyline’s walled suspension
caught in twilight’s intervention
– still unlit (in stark dissension),
therefore seething with a tension
in the quiet apprehension
of the Watchman’s inattention
to the night-time’s bold pretension
to her power, not to mention,
to her hyperspace extension
(far beyond my comprehension
of the sundown’s bleak dimension) –  
on exhausted beaten boulevards of foolish fretfulness.

Oblivion depletes me, voiding haste and hurried hassles,
me, a simple abject vassal,
trailing moonlit floating castles,
– fickle feet, but fingers facile
grasping straws and pendant tassels –
as I stumble through the rubble of forgetfulness.

I think I must be dreaming as I seem to see these things,
neath a sky alive with wings
(hear the Nightingale, she sings),
midst the whispered murmurings
soughed by Phantoms clad as Kings
pacing palaces in rings,
while their hapless footfall clings
to the sagging sinking sands of midnight’s splintered splattered ruins.

Entangled in the swirling leaves that spin in dizzy flurries,
(while the wind beside me scurries
as an ermined hermit hurries)
lurk my sleepy woes and worries
(glowing faint’ but growing blurry)
which, when plundered by the demon dusk, I’d left behind me strewn.

The forgery of Multitudes between the Silhouettes
(and discarded cigarettes,
neath the haunted parapets)
mock my lonely echoed steps
         – mock my lonely echoed steps –
(struck like clicking castanets
         – struck like clicking castanets –)
as I lace unlabeled lanes, erasing silence’ sullen treason.

The mossy stones condole with me (within the oubliettes
draped in blood and tears and sweat
sometimes dry, more often wet
quite like drops of anisette
sipped in moments one forgets
self-reproach and raw regrets)
midst the midnight minuets
and the purling pirouettes
of the fugitive Grisettes
(flaunting charms and amulets)
who, in flitting shades of arching bridges, linger longer, teasin’.

Along the When I’m drifting, but a stardust castaway,
weaving, threading by cafés
and deserted cabarets,
just a gauzy appliqué
on the river’s rippled spray,
chasing Fools along the way
through the strands of yesterday,
neath the throbbing peal of sobbing bells in spectral cloisters, quaking.

In belfries, high and haughty, alabaster Knights perform,
riding stiff against a storm,
steeped in cloudlike chloroform,
while the raven skies deform
and my shrivelled shovelled form
(rapt, while bats in steeples swarm
close to candles waxing warm)
hangs in hallowed hallways, hiding, shoulders weary, weak and aching.

Around me hover grinning masks, veiled visages of Queens,
feigning fatal final scenes
of demented doomed Dauphines
(against the scarlet sky they lean,
dreary dripping guillotines),
traced in opalescent ballrooms only tattered time remembers.

The hidden hands of Harlequins (while floating free, unseen
disbursing secrets sibylline,
amongst the manes of Halloween),
tap (on tumbrel tambourines
behind abandoned shuttered screens)
a dirge (with tattooed tones pristine)
for me (a heap in ragged jeans
in these crazy cluttered scenes),
trapped interred in toppled stone chateaus that dismal dawn dismembers.

Rogue breezes pierce, benumbing me, my ears and toes a’ freezin’
(in the Cockcrow’s purple season
as when nightmares should be easin’
and the Zephyr winds appeasin’),
so I reach for  rhyme and reason,
which endeavours leave me wheezin’,
caught impaled upon the jagged edge of early morning’s breaking.

The chill evoking silver chimes of Nodomain start knelling
as the searing sun looms swelling,
and their monodies hang dwelling
in the cloud drifts’ care, revelling,
but the Sandman’s too compelling
and my weariness impelling
– since my eyelids risk rebelling,
when they’ll fall, there’s no foretelling
for the starry sky’s past telling –
as I fade beneath the flaming forge while embers tremble, waking.