"bacchanal" poems
I bring ye wine from above,
From the vats of the storied sun;
For every one of yer love,
And life for every one.
Ye shall dance on hill and level;
Ye shall sing in hollow and height
In the festal mystical revel,
The rapurous Bacchanal rite!
The rocks and trees are yours,
And the waters under the hill,
By the might of that which endures,
The holy heaven of will!
I kindle a flame like a torrent
To rush from star to star;
Your hair as a comet’s horrent,
Ye shall see things as they are!
I lift the mask of matter;
I open the heart of man;
For I am of force to shatter
The cast that hideth -Pan!
Your loves shall lap up slaughter,
And dabbled with roses of blood
Each desperate darling daughter
Shall swim in the fervid flood.
I bring ye laughter and tears,
The kisses that foam and bleed,
The joys of a million years,
The flowers that bear no seed.
My life is bitter and sterile,
Its flame is a wandering star.
Ye shall pass in pleasure and peril
Across the mystic bar
That is set for wrath and weeping
Against the children of earth;
But ye in singing and sleeping
Shall pass in measure and mirth!
I lift my wand and wave you
Through hill to hill of delight :
My rosy rivers lave you
In innermost lustral light..
I lead you, lord of the maze,
In the darkness free of the sun;
In spite of the spite that is day’s
We are wed, we are wild, we are one.
7.1k
Gaping voids attached
at velvet hems reveal
An oscillating, silky shrine
of serpentine appeal
A sacellum of spit
where crimson vipers preach
A sermon dispossessed of words
on biting without teeth
Two lithe reptilian wrestlers
in acrobatic trance
To recompose the primal theme
from the procreating dance
They sway in mirrored unison
as heaven’s gates converge
They lick their tongues in twisting prose
and gustatory tones emerge
In this bacchanal of senses
where feelings taste of spoken sights
The serpents molt beyond their essence
onto a plane of new delights
There they share a sounding vision
muscles blink in harmony
Hissing iridescent rhythms
At last, the panting cyclopes
reach the art of seeing
eye to whispering eye
through the instrument of speech.
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 5:29 AM UTC
you cannot finish need.
it fiends in wretched globes of dwarf
swelling to tremendous steam
a Bacchanal of vineyard borscht
a moonlit morsel of demolished dreams...
we serve at the pleasure of the absurd
gilding shadows with clay confetti
and the nictitating membranes of blue crocodiles.
and blank verse.
felling the Yggdrasil, by all means; you maraud the larder
in the night kitchen; nicking blackbird-pies and pinky-russet salamanders
[ the loose farthing ] and the hard liquor... all gone now
your potato sack, rakishly slung from the shoulders of an Atlas, entitled ' Promised Land; betrayed '.
a new map shrugging off old kings from dead valleys
revealing the hour of your worthless estate,
in-lieu of the boundaries of your lost holdings. unhappily -
you inherit the unripe peach
in a hound's mouth.
you slouch rough, slowly
to your beast
of a couch:
there, to remain unholy and due South.
there, to remain unknowing
by all account.
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 10:13 PM UTC
Once, I thought of you as one usually does
Of some sort of mythical being.
Your presence only in conversations,
Drunken confessions,
A slightly blurry photograph on a phone,
Your name becoming a by-word for
Intense ****** attraction.
Once, I met you at the discotheque,
Your raven hair swirling around a
Black-clothed, willowy frame
As you partook of your personal bacchanal,
A private smile meant for my companion
On your kissable lips
And in your unfathomable eyes.
Once, you left me tongue-tied and shy,
Blushing furiously as I searched in vain
For words that usually
Happily danced on my tongue.
We left each other that night
Without having spoken past polite greetings,
And I was bitterly regretful.
Once, I decided to love myself,
And began to become almost beautiful,
Shedding layers of flesh and fear
And though I had long forgotten your face
I resolved that were I to see you again,
Both smiles and sentences would
Easily flow and you might learn of me.
Once, I took that risk,
Sending you a message full of sarcastic
And clever comments laced with charm.
This time I was ready
To set aside all of my misgivings,
Ignore your intimidating beauty,
And let myself peek through and smile.
Once, I thought it utterly impossible
That someone like you may notice me,
But after a year of meditation and peace,
I now know I was too afraid to be noticed.
Even if you lose interest and look elsewhere,
I still consider this quite the triumph,
For you were part of why I searched for myself.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 8:12 PM UTC
On the poetic hills
Of love
We ride along
Pushin'
Fighting
For the world
We're building the strength
For it
To fall
So we could get back up again
And love
On the poetic hills
Of bacchanal
Partys
and
Laughter
In alcohol
Naked under our clothes
We ride along
Pushin'
Fighting
For the world
We're going to be strong
When everything goes wrong
And smile
When everyone is back
In eachothers arms
While she puts on
Those poetic heels of love
We ride along
Pushing and fighting
For mother earth
On the poetic heels of femme fatale
We write along
we
write
along
On the poetic hills
of love…
ride.
Dec 12, 2018
Dec 12, 2018 at 2:49 AM UTC
12/10/2012:
A very mellow day,
A day that makes one’s golden years actually golden.
Happy in retirement?
There’s a joke:
You slave like Spartacus in the Libyan salt mines for 30 or 40 or even 50
years, and now you’re supposed to re-calibrate the machine, re-gauge
one’s anatomy and metabolism for a habitat so far and away grindstone
gone.
The muckrakers Studs Terkel and Barbara Ehrenreich remind us:
Work is the only thing we can do for 8 hours, other than sleep.
Perchance even to dream out that Roman **** or Bacchanal.
No, alas, 4 hours is the legal limit for an ******** lasting that long,
During all our joy-juiced carnal desires,
Be they under the elms or elsewhere.
**Cialis! ******
Names already living it up in infamy.
A simple truth about Retirement:
Stop working and die.
A most intense public service announcement,
A vast digital image out of Yeats,
A very special Spiritus Mundi P-S-A.
Targeting Baby Boomers, especially:
“You better find yourself something,
Or someone to occupy your mind.”
Brought to you by the good people at
OCCUPY BRAIN STREET,
First a national, then a veritable global movement,
However so short-lived;
Like all the others.
Oh, Boomers, your attention span is down to 8 minutes.
Your mnemonic links are frayed and tattered,
Your hard drive noodle fragmented,
Yet still whirring white noise jazz.
A New Orleans Dixieland funeral,
And Al-Zheim trumpet blast to go out on.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,
But I am relatively well adjusted in retirement.
And today—previously mentioned as a mellow day--
Today is one reason why.
As is medical marijuana and the sultry voice of Chrissie Hynde,
With or without her band of Pretenders.
And let’s throw in a lovely bottle of Temecula red wine--
Doffo, if you’re going to get fussy on me,
Another blithe distraction cultivated and custom-made for old age.
Indeed, a very mellow day.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 3:21 PM UTC
It's been the longest time,
Since I've felt this alive.
So many years gone by
Since I've seen all these guys.
But on this day, I rise,
When I was granted life,
To find my eyes surprised
By all their smiles and cries!
"Hey, happy birthday man! "
"It's been a long-ass time! "
"We planned ahead, and decided
To grab some whiskey and wine! "
And that was all it took,
To get it through my head,
That when this night was over
We'd likely do it again.
See, I'm a man with good friends,
I have a thirst I must quench,
And when Bacchus calls for me,
I always let the games begin!
And once these parties start,
They rarely, if ever, end.
And when the bottles do run dry,
Someone carries some more in.
"And every glass I take, I do it not for me;"
"It's for His Majesty!"
"It's for His Majesty!"
Now it's the third warm night
And all the wine is gone,
The whiskey comes along,
And they break out in song:
"Another cup for mine!"
"Another night survived!"
"It's for His Majesty!"
"It's for His Majesty!
Jun 4, 2020
Jun 4, 2020 at 12:59 PM UTC
I've enjoyed our bacchanal,
thus far verbal,
in the same way let's take a walk,
you pick the route,
down along the river
where we can compete skipping rocks,
or through a sylvan path
where I could show you that I'm gallant,
perhaps saving you from a low hanging branch,
then there's that orchard where I've heard your kiss 'n tell.
You pick the route so we can hold hands and talk.
Jan 22, 2011
Jan 22, 2011 at 7:19 PM UTC
The first one happened in the dark,
On an awkward bed in too much haste;
It was not really what I wanted,
Not a meal but just a taste.
The second and third were foggy at best,
A handsome face or long, blond hair,
The connections, sweat and smooth chest,
But the memories are still fair.
The fourth one kept hailing me
And I almost saw him there,
But his pursuit was like a drug
Too flattering sweet to miss;
Unknowing pain dispelled with a winter kiss.
Other trysts would follow:
In an empty room, on a stripped-down bed,
In a forest that covered a hill,
Inside a corner room,
With nights in white
Cotton and you missing still,
While floating snow fell.
I saw your face out in the storm.
No one there to keep you warm.
A summer lad was tall and fair,
His arrogance disguised as a dare,
Flaunting traits you wish weren’t there,
But a bacchanal makes up for OCD.
Until his obsession is directed at me.
Imagine Apollo in a haze of J.D.!
He took me home (unsuspecting) in his car,
Across the Valley, but it wasn’t far
Enough for me to endure his howls
About my lack of even temper
When he inspected other girls.
I stopped his rant and smashed a car door.
Yet he called the next morning,
Insanely wanting more.
And I told him that:
If a ten ton truck had crashed
Into his tin VW and we were mashed,
I couldn’t think of a worse way to die,
Than to be pinned there by his side!
So to you and all the others I bemoan:
Don’t take me back to your home.
I have no use for your romance,
I don’t need your wants,
And you don’t want what I need.
There’s a bed of my own where I prefer to sleep
And in the sunrise I will keep
A sweet liaison with coffee and birdsong,
Of synthesized music all morning long.
With a new gold dream beside me.
And summertime inside me.
There is a light and it never goes out;
Those who don’t see it have been shown out.
Mar 26, 2019
Mar 26, 2019 at 5:17 PM UTC
I don’t even write.
I simply waste more time,
I feel like smoking ***
sitting, enjoying this moment,
and watching the world burn bright and beautiful.
I don’t even want to write.
I am nihilistic in this sense, and also self-effacing, masochistic.
And nothing satisfies me, so I am like the Buddha, and relinquish my rights to the great systemic pattern.
Killing time and hoping for the apocalypse to move the broken record that skips and repeats.
Why waste more time writing the things that have been said?
Why express the inexpressible?
I wish to forget the meanings of all the words and pen bleak and esoteric paragraphs in universal grammar.
As I slowly begin to forget even what I was thinking of a minute ago, that thing that prompted this new but white opaque letter.
There is nothing more to say than that and why spend more precious moments contemplating the inevitable.
I have digressed to a state of vague generality so profound that all meaning is lost.
And I can only wipe the spit from my lips and experience the thinking slow and bored perception.
I am complicit in this great shadowy game.
The game that is me
and that is you
but also both of us together, as a whole
and my tacit approval of the state of things has lead me to a deep and darkened valley,
a slippery slope of mud meant for clawing fingernails in desperation.
And I, like the rest of my generation have perfected the bacchanal and reverie of the leisure life.
Soaking up the romantic narratives of a primitive past to accept the fate of indecision, and construct meaning from the meaningless.
Picking up the pieces of a shattered ghostly mirror only to rearrange them in the likeness of a persistent and inherent logic, which can only be shown and never understood; my own computational meat sack ever deteriorating, or perhaps growing, to the ecstasy through entropy.
I have yet to find the great rut!
On the brink of a new n’other I am blinded by choice.
And I’ve yet to find my voice!
And proof of purchase is another thing entirely.
My misery is self-imposed,
and understood as only frivolous
trash beneath the hooves of trampling centipedes of mars
Because I looked into the stars
And I stared right at the sun
And felt the rapture in the wake
Of the wave I meant to break
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 4:31 PM UTC
Behind each smile is a silent frown
Behind each door is a chair turn upside down
Behind each super bowl history,
there were losers, winners, and yes
There were some wonderful entertainment,
Beyoncé and Lady Gaga,
the mighty twins and you....
Now back at the table of poetry,
there is the Bacchanal throw-out…
the mighty twin and you....
Feb 8, 2016
Feb 8, 2016 at 11:51 AM UTC
In the springtime between the everglades and mountainside
I have talks with the sun about moving on
but between the downtown city streets and 7:54pm sunsets,
I don't know if I can.
In the summertime I find myself between the trees and the glow of light against your face until very late into the evening
driving down back roads
and talking about the past,
smoking funny plants
and speaking of our dreams.
You're lost and you don't know it,
don't worry, I am too.
There are too many things to say
and not enough time
as my thoughts collapse over the other in three's and two's.
entering the bacchanal with my own elixirs in my pockets,
the chorus of voices collide against one another into a harmonious babble.
it's 6:48pm where I am,
the sun is setting on your side of town.
if these roads could bend until they led me to where you are,
I still don't think I'd follow along.
I lost my heart to a bear trap
while searching for yours in the grove,
freckle-spotted strawberries
and cracked jars of honey
littered the path for miles on end.
I followed your gaze out of the wooden corridor and found cherry blossoms tucked between folds of linen as I greeted the morn.
Your grin is so fixed that
I look to it to find the humor
even if I'm the joke,
and I think of the way your eyes looked
when you were too stunned to speak; hand to mouth,
until I fall asleep and meet you in my lucid dreams.
Apr 10, 2019
Apr 10, 2019 at 6:31 AM UTC
the wordplay is **** serious,
fools curse us, attacking empathy
for its sensuous to their BS pretensions,
their hypertension sophistry compounds their
selling them selves as a holy sphere,
begging for attention and the approval
appetizers of meaningless internet
bacchanal celebrating
I invite you in,
where depths surface
asking you to scratch deeper
than the shallows of egoism shoals
long labored to persaude with caution,
careful disclaimers, when you enter
our first encounter, that first most
dangerous embrace, asking you
to tag along inside insights
my intent plain, secrets
displayed with increasing
the leveling tween twice
an armful of hugs
this criticism disturbs my calm,
and so I repeat twice:
grant us the write to share, in our humanity
grant us the write to share, in our humanity*
Mar 19, 2025
Mar 19, 2025 at 8:24 AM UTC
Away, not home,
this continental heat.
The air pretends
this North Atlantic rock
is worldly
The smiles of the natives
lean manic
as we clutch at multipack lager
and disposable charcoal,
grasp at the living myth
of a cloudless sky
and give ourselves to these gods
Our worship sees us sacrifice
meat and skin,
both burnt to early hours regret
and delicate, bathroom sorrows
A sporadic bacchanal
whose scarcity ensures
that be it working week,
weekend or holiday,
feverish
we’ll pay the tithe
Sunstroke and/or hangover
prove penance for our lapse
from the frigid, three bar
Protestant norm,
but these exotic gods will beguile again
even as the blistered skin still peels
Jul 31, 2020
Jul 31, 2020 at 10:38 AM UTC