Oh, weep for Adonais—he's undead!
    And hath been, lo! these interstitial years!
Yellow and black and pale and hectic red,
    His cockney mood consumptively careers.
Upon a bubbling Hippocrene he's drunk
    And dreaming, standing tiptoe on the brink
Of the wide world that sinks, and will have sunk,
    As love and fame to nothingness do sink.
An anguished autumn wind doth howl a HOWL
    Of abject grief that sweeps the graveyard's stones.
The sickle moon observes the downy owl
    That eats a mouse from tail to skull and bones.
Zombie Allan Poe, who's green and obscene,
Is sobbing, "Happy Birthday Halloween!"

Stand
before those Giant feet in sand
the ones forgotten in a foreign land
look upon the shattered visage lying there
'I am Ozymandius King of Kings
Look Upon My Works, ye Mighty and Despair'
remember well when hubris comes to call
we are nothing but a pile of wind blown dust
that's all

|small gee for god; big bee for byron|
Strikes a chord with you, does it?
This shambling poverty of thought,
Insta-rated and underwhelming;
Thank god for Byron.

|keats versus shelley|
Sparing no injury to his phthisicky frame,
Keats lies atop a make-believe of cherry trees
Searching among the clouds
For wealth, health and a Grecian urn,
While Shelley does Venice
And blows himself a hookah.

|o poesy! for thee I grasp my pen|
Panning the wayward sky for inspiration,
A hope, a word, a beginning;
A versification so ecstatic as to transfix the senses and pierce the heart,
A lightning phrase capable of uprooting all commonality,
As outrageous a miracle in the minds of men as crucified immortality.

|requiem|
Unlike the wilting rose which has no higher calling
Than to bloom and die upon the stem,
And having relinquished its last perfumed petal
Retreat from memory again,
I fear that I shall linger,
Tethered to this eternal moment
By shudd’ring will and breath combined,
A brighter shade of myself than what of me I have left behind.

Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor
by Michael R. Burch

After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs,
Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs:
“Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!”
(His name, let’s assume, was, er ... Percival Queemly.)

“Expel me! Expel me!”—She flashes her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise,
for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name ...
Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!”

“Continue to live here—carouse as you please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees.
Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose:
“I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.”
(Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.)

Originally published by Lucid Rhythms. This poem is based on an account of Edna St. Vincent Millay being confronted by a male Vassar authority about her rogue behavior. However, there is a some poetic license involved, for the sake of humor. It was actually Vassar President Henry Noble MacCracken who mentioned Shelley. Here is his account in a response to a question about Millay cutting classes: "She cut everything. I once called her in and told her, 'I want you to know that you couldn't break any rule that would make me vote for your expulsion. I don't want to have any dead Shelleys on my doorstep, and I don't care what you do.' She went to the window and looked out and she said, 'Well on those terms I think I can continue to live in this hellhole.'" The stuff about Enoch and Moloch is, of course, pure fabrication on my part.
Keywords/Tags: Millay, dead, Shelley, Vassar, dorm, hellhole, drinking, partying, ***, cutting classes

Outcast and outlaw and wild Romantic
May I rest my heart in thine gentle hands
Let it beat naked, open, and frantic
Will you pluck its strings, kiss these shiv’ring strands?

I pray, will thee guide my wandering pen
Across the page, through the spectral divide
Help find the words that evade me again
Trying to make sense of the mess inside

A desperate plea from a kindred soul
Seeking anyone who can understand
To find the words that make me feel whole
And sink teeth into the life I had planned

Find me, my lost flame and distant lover
Together, what worlds can we uncover?

At the end, my hand
Nor my fingers trembled as
I grasped her pale neck.

Keats swooned over a world that never was, except in dreams, and I've no use for that.



(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCLXIII)


In lieu of aught we know:  blue skies t'avail
Sans blot of clouds 'til puddles mirror thence
Heavn's eye...take up the chalice to drink hence
That fragrant draught which yields as if to scale
More heady visions than we've drunk, t'exhale
Like sailors on the faerie seas, pretense
Our dainty meat; as lovers swoon for sense
Oer plighted troth, not as we know; sans bail.
Go into raptures likeas Keats would stir
And Byron knew to write, as Shelley drew
Up in his Ode, faint cuz ye know in tour
What minstrels sang in ballads, weaving to
Effect those silken strands to snare souls fer
The Devil's heights.  Cuz what we have won't do.

11Mar19c

Come to think of it, Garrison Keillor reads poetry like he'd feign be Bukowski or something.



(sonnets #MMMMMCCCXXXII and MMMMMCCCXXXIII)

I


Bukowski. If I'd known--and there must trail
Off seeking an excuse to bother hence
With aught. Nor should I have writ these his sense
Of our supposed age could acknowledge bail
For, since his voice kills any spirit's frail
Hope of existance, while he coughs from thence
To fiercely say the madness dictates whence
As chopped, clipped phrases whereby he'd prevail.
And Shelley, who saw further than now's poor
Horizon, said art veils her glass whilst through
The centries curs as ole Bukowski tour--
To vanish, sans a note. Yet here all who
Aspire think vile is tops, our work as twere
In vain and refuse. Cuz such never knew.



II


Lo, ******. Surrey, Wyatt, and aught hence
Who bowed themselves to Petrarch's mincing scale,
Yes, "polished our erst homely," ruder tale
Of lines and poetry, whose manners thence
Became refined thus as we yielded, whence
Far more rebelled than dared submit, t'assail
What set us 'part from beasts as if in frail
Excuse to cavil suited their intents.
He said the "mountaintop" was mine as twere
T'enjoy, but if I wanted friends maunt do,
As they all wallowed in the mud, each boor
Disgusted save by filthy scents. Sans clue
Of our high calling meant to raise th'obscure
Light for our fellow man, ye can't, who knew.

24Dec15c,d

I have been seeking a moment when
My paean would see the light
A melody when your serrated laugh
Crescendoes and obviates all evils
But what I'm truly wishing for
Is to be a scabbard to your sword
The bell that wakes you up at noon
A hymn that you know by heart
And the rituals that you adhere to
Tell me how I could shield
The furtive rhythm of your chords
To venerate the echoes of your fingertips
And be completely absorbed in your silhouette
I am proclaiming my paean
That seems five months of age
But in fact it has been decades
Trapped amongst verses and rhymes
If Hemingway was exchanging breaths
You could be his martini glass
Or the obsession of Shelley with Keats
Or maybe a beer bottle on Hank's grave
But the golden lotus has been outdated
For you are my fierce flames
To sanctify and to revive
And unlike Plath I'm living to see
When my paean would come to life