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zebra  Feb 2019
The Scarlet Woman
zebra Feb 2019
scarlet haught
queen of mirth
dog ****
drooling jewelry red splits
pulled by a chariot  
of six hundred million house cats
dissembling for freaky insertions
of scarlet bud flowers uterine tube

breath of spit
while ballet toes kiss fingers and tongues
glazing thickly tides sweat
bamming greased ****

Christ *****
"once upon a never more"
bi-sexed up
**** twitch glistening holes
drizzle fish
in red tents overturned
for fabulous *******
and angelic *****'s
flirty dance the come **** me  

her throat a never ending squealed gullet
sublime Madonna of Oor
bare thighed and pulpy spread
scissor strokes and stride
wagging tongue for rosy oleo sticks
and **** pastry rectums pulled tight
in lop sided temples of split flesh

another ambulance to the emergency **** ward
in a dreamland of leggy nurses

sacred fig of Freyja
Goddess to **** toys
and pretty pretty who go that way
hocus opus poke and stir
freckle face **** mouth
a lapping menagerie

i gird my ***** and follow her
into a cologned room; of dark rim box butter
***** yelping for
a slow grind in a belly of clams

red and velvet pageant
she nests in the heart
a midwife disturbia
to pregnant lust
being pushed down and worked up
till loosened in thick ****
and black whip afterbirth
like flowers of curves and blood

her banquet; a platter of wet orifice
trilling vibratos ******
and anxious kisses crawling through her mouth
like fallen angels flying
dire sister of knock out *******
pleading goth nuns for lesbian heated
Satan loving veiled Christian crotch
and a thousand delicious gaped
******* **** poundings
and mouth ***** **** plunge

crucifix of wrack and *****
****** and beaten senseless
instructions from the  book of night
of **** and spite
written by
Abrahams primitive nations
arms of the cross she is nailed to
sweet ***** waifs beaten dead
in a tillage of brokenness

mans club
shore of incinerated witches and tortured justice
shut up when your talkin to me
clan of honor
duo troupe
almanac of hell
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Madison's defense of the establishment clause to the Virginia
      legislature:
Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence.

                                          May I say
electromagnetic waves. Radiant energy.
Light travels in waves
                                      Waves of what?
Electromagnetic waves consist of electric and magnetic fields
oscillating at right angles to each other
and to the direction of motion of the wave.
                                                           ­             All waves can be described
in terms of amplitude, wavelength, frequency and speed.

Waves of what?
                            Think of a hand waving. The wave itself
is virtual, ideal. The hand and eyes are waves. The wave's
a quantum guess.
                           Religion and electromagnetic waves - visible, audible, ideal
causing real reactions in earth-time (real as it gets). Madison's
ordinary
               care of Providence
                                               impossible to handle.

Needed is a medium: antenna, cathode ray, page,
body
          hairy, sweaty
                                 diurnal
with the capacity to say Providence electromagnetic visible light
element god.
                       Alone in your life and body. Say
the heavy word
weighty word
isotope
             charged word (ion god)
the particle physicist and political philosopher have it over the poet
who is sharing ignorance
                                           pretty much all he doesn't know.

Or who stays within a dimension she knows she knows, extrapolating
her hand in a child's hand or husband's hold or nest in a tree hole
limited government
                                  separation of powers
                                                          ­            daily low intensity warfare
light, radio and gamma waves
                                                     Waves of what?
Matter can be treated by both wave and particle theories (the duality of matter) since its convertible counterpart - light - has long been treated successfully by both theories.
convertible counterpart
                                         light matter light

Solutions to the equations are called wave functions, or orbitals.
Religion or the duty which we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much to soon forget it.

Last night's movie She's No Angel on the Christian channel
begged many essential questions (and had bad music)
                                                          ­                                  why
the loving liberal successful couple should
keep a shotgun in the home (later used per Shakespeare)
                                                    ­                                           what
the community's (authority's) reaction to the violence
and precipitating dissembling might have been (per The Crucible)
                                                       ­                                             whether
the golden spiritual couple would subsequently dissemble lobby or
      defend
themselves and the loved one legally and lengthily (per Dostoyevsky)
                                                    ­                                                   where
unclean tragic outcomes end in Death's cleanliness
ravens eat the fur and guts of bad guesses off the roads (per A
      Designer of Systems)

but not I think missing
the deeper lesson

that she is neither her past
nor her wings

but a pure goodness
                                   bone stillness
                                                       ­   potential energy

a light wave
and a particle.
--Madison, James, "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments"
--LeMay, Beall, Robblee & Brower, Chemistry: Connections to Our Changing World, Prentice Hall, 2000

www.ronnowpoetry.com
I admit the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.

I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.

Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?
1271

September’s Baccalaureate
A combination is
Of Crickets—Crows—and Retrospects
And a dissembling Breeze

That hints without assuming—
An Innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun
And turn Philosopher.
sir humbug Jul 2018
one more for Joni and the one who accuses me of
"owning the courage to care so blatantly."

<:>
accused of writing with blatant courage,
a  4 credit requirement for caring

blatant is a word of merger -
open obvious unsubtle and unashamed

and a dissembling misleading one!

it is all of these  and yet can be a contradictory mask of
opposing, differing faces

my blatant is none of these
but appearance only

**** muses keep me coming back
to a particular lyric,
keeps seeking me out, so successfully, wherever I go,
I hear it
it’s invading my both sides now

the dizzy dancing way you feel

you think I have my own blatant courage, untrue!
so oft you mistook my dizzy dancing,
all fluff all humbug so obvious so ashamed,
a cover up, a most subtle cosmetic pretense of the truth -
  of
no courage at all
and yet (they mock)
you do care...

just another of my peculiar
life’s illusions
(self-delusions)

  I really don’t have blatant courage at all
I
FATHER AND CHILD
SHE hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.

II
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE

IF I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

III
A FIRST CONFESSION

I ADMIT the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.
I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.
Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

IV
HER TRIUMPH

I DID the dragon's will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

V

CONSOLATION

O BUT there is wisdom
In what the sages said;
But stretch that body for a while
And lay down that head
Till I have told the sages
Where man is comforted.
How could passion run so deep
Had I never thought
That the crime of being born
Blackens all our lot?
But where the crime's committed
The crime can be forgot.

VI
CHOSEN

THE lot of love is chosen.  I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.
Scarce did he my body touch,
Scarce sank he from the west
Or found a subtetranean rest
On the maternal midnight of my breast
Before I had marked him on his northern way,
And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.
I struggled with the horror of daybreak,
I chose it for my lot! If questioned on
My utmost pleasure with a man
By some new-married bride, I take
That stillness for a theme
Where his heart my heart did seem
And both adrift on the miraculous stream
Where -- wrote a learned astrologer --
The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.

VII
PARTING
He. Dear, I must be gone
While night Shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
She. No, night's bird and love's
Bids all true lovers rest,
While his loud song reproves
The murderous stealth of day.
He. Daylight already flies
From mountain crest to crest
She. That light is from the moom.
He. That bird...
She. Let him sing on,
I offer to love's play
My dark declivities.

VIII
HER VISION IN THE WOOD

DRY timber under that rich foliage,
At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,
Too old for a man's love I stood in rage
Imagining men.  Imagining that I could
A greater with a lesser pang assuage
Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,
I tore my body that its wine might cover
Whatever could rccall the lip of lover.
And after that I held my fingers up,
Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran
Down every withered finger from the top;
But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,
And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop
Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,
Or smote upon the string and to the sound
Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.
All stately women moving to a song
With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,
It seemed a Quattrocento painter's throng,
A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought --
Why should they think that are for ever young?
Till suddenly in grief's contagion caught,
I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast
And sang my malediction with the rest.
That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,
Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,
And, though love's bitter-sweet had all come back,
Those bodies from a picture or a coin
Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,
Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,
That they had brought no fabulous symbol there
But my heart's victim and its torturer.

IX
A LAST CONFESSION

WHAT lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved ******.
Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
I gave what other women gave
"That stepped out of their clothes.
But when this soul, its body off,
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,
And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
There's not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.

X
MEETING

HIDDEN by old age awhile
In masker's cloak and hood,
Each hating what the other loved,
Face to face we stood:
"That I have met with such,' said he,
"Bodes me little good.'
"Let others boast their fill,' said I,
"But never dare to boast
That such as I had such a man
For lover in the past;
Say that of living men I hate
Such a man the most.'
'A loony'd boast of such a love,'
He in his rage declared:
But such as he for such as me --
Could we both discard
This beggarly habiliment --
Had found a sweeter word.

XI
FROM THE 'ANTIGONE'

OVERCOME -- O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl --
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the Same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.
Pray I will and sing I must,
And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child
Descends into the loveless dust.
INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ.

        Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
        Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
        Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
        The short and simple annals of the poor.
                  (Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”)

  My lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
      No mercenary bard his homage pays;
    With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end:
      My dearest meed a friend’s esteem and praise.
      To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
    The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene;
      The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
    What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween!

  November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh,
      The short’ning winter day is near a close;
    The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh,
      The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose;
    The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,—
    This night his weekly moil is at an end,—
      Collects his spades, his mattocks and his hoes,
    Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend.

  At length his lonely cot appears in view,
      Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
    Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through
      To meet their dad, wi’ flichterin noise an’ glee.
      His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,
    His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie’s smile,
      The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
    Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile,
An’ makes him quite forget his labour an’ his toil.

  Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,
      At service out, amang the farmers roun’;
    Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin
      A cannie errand to a neibor toun:
      Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,
    In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e,
      Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown,
    Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee,
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

  With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,
      An’ each for other’s weelfare kindly spiers:
    The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d fleet;
      Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears.
      The parents partial eye their hopeful years;
    Anticipation forward points the view;
      The mother, wi’ her needle an’ her sheers,
    Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new;
The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.

  Their master’s an’ their mistress’s command
      The younkers a’ are warned to obey;
    An’ mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,
      An’ ne’er tho’ out o’ sight, to jauk or play:
      “An’ O! be sure to fear the Lord alway,
    An’ mind your duty, duly, morn an’ night!
      Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,
    Implore his counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright!”

  But hark! a rap comes gently to the door.
      Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same,
    Tells how a neebor lad cam o’er the moor,
      To do some errands, and convoy her hame.
      The wily mother sees the conscious flame
    Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek;
      Wi’ heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name,
      While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;
Weel-pleas’d the mother hears, it’s nae wild, worthless rake.

  Wi’ kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben,
      A strappin youth; he takes the mother’s eye;
    Blythe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill taen;
      The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.
      The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy,
    But, blate and laithfu’, scarce can weel behave;
      The mother wi’ a woman’s wiles can spy
    What maks the youth sae bashfu’ an’ sae grave,
Weel pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave.

  O happy love! where love like this is found!
      O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
    I’ve paced much this weary, mortal round,
      And sage experience bids me this declare—
    “If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
      One cordial in this melancholy vale,
      ’Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
    In other’s arms breathe out the tender tale,
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev’ning gale.”

  Is there, in human form, that bears a heart,
      A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth!
    That can with studied, sly, ensnaring art
      Betray sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth?
      Curse on his perjur’d arts! dissembling smooth!
    Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil’d?
      Is there no pity, no relenting truth,
    Points to the parents fondling o’er their child,
Then paints the ruin’d maid, and their distraction wild?

  But now the supper crowns their simple board,
      The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia’s food;
    The soupe their only hawkie does afford,
      That yont the hallan snugly chows her cud.
      The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,
    To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck fell,
      An’ aft he’s prest, an’ aft he ca’s it guid;
    The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,
How ’twas a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell.

  The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
      They round the ingle form a circle wide;
    The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,
      The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride;
      His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,
    His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;
      Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
    He wales a portion with judicious care;
And, “Let us worship God,” he says with solemn air.

  They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
      They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
    Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise,
      Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name,
      Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame,
    The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays.
      Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;
      The tickl’d ear no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they, with our Creator’s praise.

  The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
      How Abram was the friend of God on high;
    Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
      With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;
      Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
    Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;
      Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
    Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

  Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
      How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
    How He, who bore in Heaven the second name
      Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:
      How His first followers and servants sped;
    The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
      How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
    Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounc’d by Heaven’s command.

  Then kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King,
      The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
    Hope “springs exulting on triumphant wing,”
      That thus they all shall meet in future days:
      There ever bask in uncreated rays,
    No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,
      Together hymning their Creator’s praise,
    In such society, yet still more dear,
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.

  Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride
      In all the pomp of method and of art,
    When men display to congregations wide
      Devotion’s ev’ry grace except the heart!
      The Pow’r, incens’d, the pageant will desert,
    The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
      But haply in some cottage far apart
    May hear, well pleas’d, the language of the soul,
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enrol.

  Then homeward all take off their sev’ral way;
      The youngling cottagers retire to rest;
    The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
      And proffer up to Heav’n the warm request,
      That He who stills the raven’s clam’rous nest,
    And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride,
      Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
    For them and for their little ones provide;
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.

  From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs,
      That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad:
    Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
      “An honest man’s the noblest work of God”:
      And certes, in fair Virtue’s heavenly road,
    The cottage leaves the palace far behind:
      What is a lordling’s pomp? a cumbrous load,
    Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin’d!

  O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
      For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
    Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
      Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
      And, oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
    From luxury’s contagion, weak and vile!
      Then, howe’er crowns and coronets be rent,
    A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov’d isle.

  O Thou! who pour’d the patriotic tide
      That stream’d thro’ Wallace’s undaunted heart,
    Who dar’d to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
      Or nobly die, the second glorious part,—
      (The patriot’s God peculiarly thou art,
    His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)
      O never, never Scotia’s realm desert,
    But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!
1330

Without a smile—Without a Throe
A Summer’s soft Assemblies go
To their entrancing end
Unknown—for all the times we met—
Estranged, however intimate—
What a dissembling Friend—
PoetWhoKnowIt  May 2013
Ingénue~
PoetWhoKnowIt May 2013
Ingénue, Ingénue
mellifluous intonation;
within my ear
intangible embrocation!

Emollient to my inure
lithe and lilt affections-
A panacea, a talisman
fetching provocation.

Ingénue, Ingénue
Why must you fall
into such fugacious
dalliances?

Becoming and comely
are you
The cynosure of men
dissembling by demure

Ingénue, Ingénue
how easily I imbue
sempiternal scintilla
into naive little you

Lo, during my brooding-
arrive in halcyon gambol,
Dulcet or Saccharine
Is it me or you?

Ingénue, oh Ingénue
an epiphany, so true
a furtive labyrinthine
past the offing of you

None so opulent
cast more than penumbra.
T'would simply be Pyrrhic
to go on, continue.
Someone once told me my vocabulary was lacking... so I started writing poems to remember words.
Ingénue - a naive young woman
mellifluous - Sweet sounding
intonation - inflection
intangible - unable to be touched or grasped
emborcation - to apply a lotion
emollient - a softening agent
inure - to become jaded
lithe - slender and flexible
lilt - move musically or lively
panacea - solution to all problems
talisman - a good luck charm
fetching - pretty
fugacious - fleeting
dalliances - short love affair
cynosure - focus of admiration
dissembling - deceive
demure - shy and reserved
imbue - instill, infuse
sempiternal - eternal
scintilla - a small spark
brooding - thinking alone
halcyon - happy, care-free
gambol - to skip or leap about joyfully
dulcet - sweet or sugary
saccharine - overly or sickishly sweet
epiphany - sudden realization
furtive - sneaky
offing - area of ocean between horizon and offshore
opulent - lush, luxurious
penumbra - half-shadow
Pyrrhic - victory but with heavy losses
Lawrence Hall Dec 2016
Christmas Morning – Some Dissembling Required

Does the quiet magic disappear at dawn?
The Star, the stable, shepherds, wise men three
And all the mysteries of Christmas Eve
Seem less than vapor on bright Christmas Day

Among the litter of expectations
Cast happily about, and on the floor
The wrappings and ribbons of little gifts
Received and given around the festive tree

But every noisy moment reminds us:
The quiet magic never goes away

— The End —