#victorian
In the Saturday eventide, the silence of men breaks,
Whilst I keep the quiet amongst them.
They wander in the noise of streets and crowds,
Though twilight calls the people to surrender their voice.
I hear faint calls from nowhere,
Yet I wander in the dark.
It is not the first, nor shall it be the last—
Days simply pass in wandering thought.
I search for meaning in the dusk,
And lose myself in the dawn of the world.
Days go by, and people ask me,
“Is the work you do well enough?”
Yet I wander seeking a voice beyond death,
For I know it is but my own lonely echo.
Mar 16
Mar 16, 2026 at 4:39 AM UTC
Few men find the gold, the rest are left with dust.
Some dig deep and quench their thirst, while others strike but clay and mire.
Most men share their bread and stew, whilst others wander the silent streets.
All men find one love upon this earth—yet not this soul, though seven worlds endure.
Mar 11
Mar 11, 2026 at 1:29 PM UTC
the town's Duchess,
the last of her grace and demeanor.
Nobody ever sung quite like her again,
or flung about their golden strings of hair,
away away into the day.
How she watched the stars at night,
and silenced all the village's cries,
singing to them, and never arose any fright.
She is long gone now,
and lies like a frame,
still in the ever-living beauty
that waited behind those coronation doors.
Now once a year
by this rock and stone path ,
I seek out her tomb and shed my tears,
I listen for her songs,
soft lullabies turned to quiet knells,
of sweet sorrow and her drifted honey fragrance,
burried under the earths' brown rivers.
May you whisper onto Charon, I have been waiting by his ferryboat,
to pay the duchesses tupence.
Oct 28, 2025
Oct 28, 2025 at 8:28 AM UTC
At first, I was a tree —a blade of grass...—a cloud....
My eye saw and my skin felt — I did breath in the butterfly
So close to Nature–as–God was I that...
Romanced her she did to me
Then, with a rending that tore all asunder,
Iron AND
Steel AND
Coal AND
THUNDER of...
Machines pounding pounding pounding and...
Ripping and ripping and ripping
With a mighty roaring of engines came
The Victorian Era bound up in all its pain.
Sep 8, 2025
Sep 8, 2025 at 7:55 PM UTC
Whispered words and stolen glances,
gloved hands clasp, fingers laced.
Hidden lines and hopeful chances -
In dim-lit parlors, a warm embrace.
Out of the shadows -
A flame.
Oct 24, 2023
Oct 24, 2023 at 11:22 AM UTC
“Why did you do this for me?” He asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.” “You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
- E.B. White Charlotte's Web
Blooming violet, ghost
Of the blonde sun.
Beauty of contrast.
The sun shines brighter
But not perceived by many,
The violet no longer hides
And eclipses the star with
Its heart shaped petals
Mythic essence, desired
By queens... emperors.
Her hidden power.
The might of Greece
Kneels down to her grace.
The flower of spring Persephone
Has chosen. Athens symbol.
Flower to fool Apollo
Withheld greatness, how
modest she is to all.
The gift of Humility.
The faithful flower painted
Timidly by the Bible’s artists,
Is occasionally too reticent
To glance at her kind spirit
And behold my rescue
Healing Heartsease, blossoming
Even before melting snow.
The soul savior.
Violet’s tender touch of protection
Softly soothing my skin.
The salve of my machine.
Her words, the river dam.
But ephemeral is the scent.
Friendship essence, sweet
Magic wholly consuming me.
Tolkien of love.
How elegantly and delicately her
Colors dance and sing with the wind,
To engender the Victorian praxis
Binding us both with thoughts
Occupied by timeless bliss.
Elegant royal, spiritual
Guide of my fortune and good judgment.
Muse of twilight.
For she finds me in cold calamity
And warms my hand through the abyss.
Stargazing, I dream of hope, clarity and
To be born anew. She left her nectar.
Early morning emerges in delight.
Jan 14, 2021
Jan 14, 2021 at 8:28 AM UTC
The geese
Form a procession
in their northern formal dress.
Single file they march down
The hill
Coming from deep out of
the tree line and through
A courtyard of grass and sedge,
Their solemn walk
An act of unison metered by
webbed feet.
And an overdone elegance.
At shore of the pond
They prostrate themselves,
Head bowed to the water.
As if encountering an old
priestess among the
church pews.
Solemnly they shake their
Necks like human hands-
A time honored ritual.
Then, an unknown cue,
Their heads
turn up to the blue sky
launching themselves Into
the water
splash-less, like
Floating clouds blown on
The breeze.
Now moving independently,
leaving ripple paths
across the pond.
The ritual has ended.
Oct 2, 2020
Oct 2, 2020 at 11:00 AM UTC
Wintersun
entered the upstairs library,
In shifts,
heads bowed.
The flickers of remembrance
softly stroked her hair,
Until the dousing of
the final candle
Summoned nightfall
to dance at her funeral party.
Sep 28, 2020
Sep 28, 2020 at 4:23 PM UTC
The horse breathes in the city, the world of unrelenting pistons
And steam from the jingling harness, and the jangling windows
That reflect the bolting sparrows like fire arrows in the coming night,
Viennese darkness is like the smell of the chocolatier mixed with snow,
Sealed in a sachertorte with the alley-crack of the riding whip on coach,
Viennese sunshine is like the baker’s soul, rising on flashing coppers and tins.
Aug 16, 2020
Aug 16, 2020 at 9:25 PM UTC
The ornate rosewood clock
Chimed 12 midnight;
Tick tock tick tock...
Echoed back lavish papered walls.
Only the soft candlelight
Bore witness to the scarlet stained walls;
The anguished muffled cry
Drowned by the midnight chime.
It knew when to strike.
At midnight.
May 27, 2020
May 27, 2020 at 4:22 PM UTC
It all happened
Once Upon A Time, like in the fairy tales, but
it went backwards
and backwards
and
backwards,
opposite and upside down
like he was in Alice in Wonderland
and the wicked stepmother was not a stepmother at all;
with no pointed chin or sharp daggers for eyes.
Instead she looked like a princess
with a gentle face and round, brown eyes
like a mother.
She was good at goodness
at being kind
at loving him in front of everybody’s eyes
and making him think
it wasn’t so bad, after all.
But she was also good at
shouting
and yelling
and hitting and smacking,
at giving him the belt
and the switch
and sometimes the slipper.
And in his fairy tale
there was no kind, gentle father.
There was no father.
“Gone,” she’d say of him, “drunk somewhere.
With a *****
Dying, hopefully.
If he was here
he’d **** you.”
Sometimes he
wished,
hoped
his father would come back and
live up to his promise
and ****
and ****
and ****
and ****
and ****
until there was nobody left to ****
because they were all dead and destroyed
and dead
and destroyed
and their clothes mopped up their own blood
and when he was sobered enough to realise what he’d done
he’d stand over them,
mournfully,
and weep
over his drunken mistakes
over just who he had
murdered
with his own knife, who he had cut
cut
cut
jagged shapes into their flesh,
torn pieces of them away
like he had drunk away pieces of himself;
an eye for an eye;
an equal pound of their fair flesh,
cut off and taken,
stolen,
like a jewel in the night.
But no father came,
and he stayed dissatisfied and alive
and his mother came
and belted him
whenever she pleased.
He grew up dissatisfied,
lived dissatisfied,
and anger grew in his bloodied heart,
furious,
bleeding with the pain of it
growing to despise his father’s ******
even more than he despised his father
and his mother
and himself.
He learnt all their names:
Nichols
and Chapman
and Stride and Eddowes
and Kelly.
And he stalked the streets,
searching
searching
searching
searching
searching,
for they had lain with his father
and had wronged him
by leaving him
alone with his mother
and the belt
and the switches,
and if they wronged him,
should he not revenge?
Sep 18, 2019
Sep 18, 2019 at 3:46 PM UTC
Death has pluck, you know, the like to sever love,
Then to show unannounced after the ruckus,
Even after so many no-shows at the theatre or club.
Death, indeed, is a tough sport, I am told,
Who plays cricket or some the sort,
Though no one really knows or asks,
“Wicket” does seem a word of choice.
But, for certain, a devil’s ouija hand
Of bridge whist, as sure as lives off
Pall Mall or Regent, as pipes a walk
In the London fog, here and there.
Yes, indeed, I would call him a chum
If he wasn’t such a cad.
Jul 9, 2019
Jul 9, 2019 at 7:36 PM UTC
Shall I compare thee to a winders breeze?
Thou art more cool and clement
Thou art more shinier than the nights stars.
Tis the day they know
The day that they realise how it is you that I cannot fathom.
You have always whispered to me the true nature of the world.
Your energy radiating a voice so pure,
A voice so humbly harmonized
A voiced groomed to perfection,
A sound so perfectly aligned, moved by the hands that have orchestrated.
A sound that has raised my soul through its perfect symphonies.
Shall I say that the winds have whispered to me?
Shakespeare has driven me to an era so old.
An era so new.
An era for hope.
Travel with me.
Let us move to the Victorian lifestyle
Let us challenge Science, philosophy and the wonders of what is now.
Dive into this lifestyle.
And let us compare then to now.
Shakespearean to Victorian.
Travel with me.
To Sonnet 18.1
Sep 14, 2018
Sep 14, 2018 at 3:05 AM UTC
Good bye! Awful love, goodbye!
You vile ****** annoying fly
I’ve had it with your awful lies
Be gone, forever, our love is dry
Your vile thoughts ***** my brain
The happy hum that replaced your name
Lowly, you sit in despair, for shame!
You awful love, your name is in vain
Goodbye! You awful love indeed;
So lucky was I to be your need
So silly to think I’d follow your lead
Goodbye awful love, don’t remember me.
Jun 20, 2018
Jun 20, 2018 at 9:41 PM UTC
Hush! he approaches
Rush! here his coach is,
Try to silence all the fear your trembling poor heart makes,
Stop! or he'll see you,
Chop! that's what he'll do,
Dismemebering you bit by bit, a moment it will take,
Come! let me show you,
Run! this you must do,
Evade the cuts and thrusts from such a menacing sharp knife,
Look! keep your eyes peeled,
Shook! that's how you feel,
If he ensnares you trust me, he will bleed away your life,
Oops! i've deceived you,
Nice! how i've played you,
enticing you with urgency into my masters lair,
Tricked! how delightful,
Stripped! oh so frightful,
your gut spills forth its contents but your screams are never heard,
Spared! that's what i am,
You! sacraficed lamb,
I live another day while lord and master feeds on you,
Search! nightly i scour,
Creep! in the wee hours,
providing my lords food supply, or i will be killed too......
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 9:38 AM UTC
And
within moments of pity,
pride, possession, avarice;
and still, moments must resentful,
lustful, arduous, close;
some great current, unmoved
unblunted, unweakened, unswerved,
remains aflow;
for common nearness, a bondless magnetism,
abounds through within faith-constance,
ever-surmounting that sight or scent
there without.
Apr 25, 2018
Apr 25, 2018 at 3:19 PM UTC
You’re preaching your vanity
To my innocent insanity
But I will hide within
While you strut and jut your chin.
Feeble destruction, I confess
Sitting in my pretty dress.
Ribbons of gold and silk of blue
I wouldn’t lift my skirt for you.
Roses white and gentle pink
Stained with red when the thorns *****
To behead a rose - 'tis not wise
Our stinging beauty terrifies.
Among the peonies, footsteps soft
Pretty little ladies’ faces don’t rot.
Corsets choking our manic laughter
Underneath her frills it’s a disaster.
My innocent insanity
Comes with a smile.
Take my paper hand good sir
Stay with me for a while.
You’ll enter blind
And leave a new man
Able to hear
That that is not there
And barely able to stand.
Apr 9, 2018
Apr 9, 2018 at 9:07 PM UTC
A soul, a skip, a time, a page.
Twill and twine, butter me up.
Bowler hat, dapper gray.
Tea and twist, slap it away.
Hatpins stab and teamice snore.
A soul, a skip, a time no more.
Mar 12, 2018
Mar 12, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC
How many heroes have chosen this path,
Of least or no resistance?
In the face of overwhelming odds,
Or staring at cubicular, corporate submission;
Elect instead the stance
Of simply
Doing
Nothing?
Victorian ladies thought it amusing;
20th Century Centurions and Puritans condemned it.
The spoon-fed rich live it and lose nothing.
Russian aristocrats sometimes recommend it…
When spurned in love & up against it.
Oblomov, for instance, whiled his time away,
In bed, or staring out at the wood,
Writing meaningless letters and ignoring the day,
Yet it still did him some good.
Marat in his bathtub, Proust in his bed,
Still accomplished SOMETHING
Or we’d have forgotten them instead.
Is there still no virtue in doing nothing?
Against the tide of corporate work,
Aquarians rebelled with dance.
Later on, Generation X
Came to work in a greedy trance.
Peter Gibbons was hypnotized,
To escape his lifeless job,
Destroyed the office as it was downsized,
But was promoted by “the Bobs”.
Some lesson there, for those who strive,
That work alone is not enough.
Attitude is more important to our lives,
That revolt by nothingness is not that tough.
Abbie Hoffman was thrown through windows,
While preaching peace instead of wrath.
Despite nobility of cause, does humanity still go,
The inexorable way of sloth?
Sharon Talbot
Sep 9, 2017
Sep 9, 2017 at 8:43 AM UTC
The carpenter in one glance
undresses the house
with his eyes.
She, a Victorian dame
of voluptuous frame
in faded, ragged dress
seems to blush
at his appraisal.
He yearns to explore
intimate spaces,
strip her pretension,
commit filthy acts
hammering skillfully
with strange pleasure,
the work of hands,
attention to detail,
rubbing sweet oils
her inner beauty revealed.
It will end in soft strokes
a thoughtful cleanup
leaving an afterglow
of rejuvenation.
Her timbers moan
with anticipation.
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 4:01 PM UTC