Goblin Market
by Christina Rossetti

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries; -
All ripe together
In summer weather, -
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy."

Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger-tips.
"Lie close," Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
"Come buy," call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
"Oh," cried Lizzie, "Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men."
Lizzie covered up her eyes,
Covered close lest they should look;
Laura reared her glossy head,
And whispered like the restless brook:
"Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen ***** little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds' weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes."
"No," said Lizzie: "No, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us.'
She ****** a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat's face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat's pace,
One crawled like a snail,
One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry scurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.

Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone.

Backwards up the mossy glen
Turned and trooped the goblin men,
With their shrill repeated cry,
'Come buy, come buy.'
When they reached where Laura was
They stood stock still upon the moss,
Leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
Signalling each other,
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
One reared his plate;
One began to weave a crown
Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown
(Men sell not such in any town);
One heaved the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her:
"Come buy, come buy," was still their cry.
Laura stared but did not stir,
Longed but had no money.
The whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste
In tones as smooth as honey,
The cat-faced purr'd,
The rat-paced spoke a word
Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;
One parrot-voiced and jolly
Cried "Pretty Goblin" still for "Pretty Polly";
One whistled like a bird.

But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
"Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather."
"You have much gold upon your head,"
They answered all together:
"Buy from us with a golden curl."
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
Then ****** their fruit globes fair or red.
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She ****** and ****** and ****** the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She ****** until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away
But gathered up one kernel stone,
And knew not was it night or day
As she turned home alone.

Lizzie met her at the gate
Full of wise upbraidings:
'Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens;
Should not loiter in the glen
In the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Plucked from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the moonlight
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew gray;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
You should not loiter so."
"Nay, hush," said Laura:
"Nay, hush, my sister:
I ate and ate my fill,
Yet my mouth waters still:
Tomorrow night I will
Buy more;' and kissed her:
"Have done with sorrow;
I'll bring you plums tomorrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
What melons icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed:
Odorous indeed must be the mead
Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink
With lilies at the brink,
And sugar-sweet their sap."

Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other's wings,
They lay down in their curtained bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tipped with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars gazed in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forebore to fly,
Not a bat flapped to and fro
Round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Locked together in one rest.

Early in the morning
When the first **** crowed his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest maidens should:
Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
One longing for the night.

At length slow evening came:
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Lizzie most placid in her look,
Laura most like a leaping flame.
They drew the gurgling water from its deep.
Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,
Then turning homeward said: "The sunset flushes
Those furthest loftiest crags;
Come, Laura, not another maiden lags.
No wilful squirrel wags,
The beasts and birds are fast asleep.'
But Laura loitered still among the rushes,
And said the bank was steep.

And said the hour was early still,
The dew not fall'n, the wind not chill;
Listening ever, but not catching
The customary cry,
"Come buy, come buy,"
With its iterated jingle
Of sugar-baited words:
Not for all her watching
Once discerning even one goblin
Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling -
Let alone the herds
That used to ***** along the glen,
In groups or single,
Of brisk fruit-merchant men.

Till Lizzie urged, "O Laura, come;
I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:
You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home.
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
Each glow-worm winks her spark,
Let us get home before the night grows dark:
For clouds may gather
Though this is summer weather,
Put out the lights and drench us through;
Then if we lost our way what should we do?"

Laura turned cold as stone
To find her sister heard that cry alone,
That goblin cry,
"Come buy our fruits, come buy."
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?
Must she no more such succous pasture find,
Gone deaf and blind?
Her tree of life drooped from the root:
She said not one word in her heart's sore ache:
But peering thro' the dimness, nought discerning,
Trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;
So crept to bed, and lay
Silent till Lizzie slept;
Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.

Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin cry,
"Come buy, come buy"; -
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen:
But when the noon waxed bright
Her hair grew thin and gray;
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
To swift decay and burn
Her fire away.

One day remembering her kernel-stone
She set it by a wall that faced the south;
Dewed it with tears, hoped for a root,
Watched for a waxing shoot,
But there came none.
It never saw the sun,
It never felt the trickling moisture run:
While with sunk eyes and faded mouth
She dreamed of melons, as a traveller sees
False waves in desert drouth
With shade of leaf-crowned trees,
And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.

She no more swept the house,
Tended the fowls or cows,
Fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,
Brought water from the brook:
But sat down listless in the chimney-nook
And would not eat.

Tender Lizzie could not bear
To watch her sister's cankerous care,
Yet not to share.
She night and morning
Caught the goblins' cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:" -
Beside the brook, along the glen,
She heard the ***** of goblin men,
The voice and stir
Poor Laura could not hear;
Longed to buy fruit to comfort her,
But feared to pay too dear.
She thought of Jeanie in her grave,
Who should have been a bride;
But who for joys brides hope to have
Fell sick and died
In her gay prime,
In earliest winter time,
With the first glazing rime,
With the first snow-fall of crisp winter time.

Till Laura dwindling
Seemed knocking at Death's door.
Then Lizzie weighed no more
Better and worse;
But put a silver penny in her purse,
Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze
At twilight, halted by the brook:
And for the first time in her life
Began to listen and look.

Laughed every goblin
When they spied her peeping:
Came towards her hobbling,
Flying, running, leaping,
Puffing and blowing,
Chuckling, clapping, crowing,
Clucking and gobbling,
Mopping and mowing,
Full of airs and graces,
Pulling wry faces,
Demure grimaces,
Cat-like and rat-like,
Ratel- and wombat-like,
Snail-paced in a hurry,
Parrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter-skelter, hurry skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes, -
Hugged her and kissed her:
Squeezed and caressed her:
Stretched up their dishes,
Panniers, and plates:
"Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries,
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and **** them,
Pomegranates, figs." -

"Good folk," said Lizzie,
Mindful of Jeanie:
"Give me much and many:" -
Held out her apron,
Tossed them her penny.
"Nay, take a seat with us,
Honour and eat with us,"
They answered grinning:
"Our feast is but beginning.
Night yet is early,
Warm and dew-pearly,
Wakeful and starry:
Such fruits as these
No man can carry;
Half their bloom would fly,
Half their dew would dry,
Half their flavour would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us,
Be welcome guest with us,
Cheer you and rest with us." -
"Thank you," said Lizzie: "But one waits
At home alone for me:
So without further parleying,
If you will not sell me any
Of your fruits though much and many,
Give me back my silver penny
I tossed you for a fee." -
They began to scratch their pates,
No longer wagging, purring,
But visibly demurring,
Grunting and snarling.
One called her proud,
Cross-grained, uncivil;
Their tones waxed loud,
Their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled her,
Elbowed and jostled her,
Clawed with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
Twitched her hair out by the roots,
Stamped upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.

White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood, -
Like a rock of blue-veined stone
Lashed by tides obstreperously, -
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire, -
Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee, -
Like a royal ****** town
Topped with gilded dome and spire
Close beleaguered by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.

One may lead a horse to water,
Twenty cannot make him drink.
Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,
Coaxed and fought her,
Bullied and besought her,
Scratched her, pinched her black as ink,
Kicked and knocked her,
Mauled and mocked her,
Lizzie uttered not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
Lest they should cram a mouthful in:
But laughed in heart to feel the drip
Of juice that syruped all her face,
And lodged in dimples of her chin,
And streaked her neck which quaked like curd.
At last the evil people,
Worn out by her resistance,
Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit
Along whichever road they took,
Not leaving root or stone or shoot;
Some writhed into the ground,
Some dived into the brook
With ring and ripple,
Some scudded on the gale without a sound,
Some vanished in the distance.

In a smart, ache, tingle,
Lizzie went her way;
Knew not was it night or day;
Sprang up the bank, tore thro' the furze,
Threaded copse and ******,
And heard her penny jingle
Bouncing in her purse, -
Its bounce was music to her ear.
She ran and ran
As if she feared some goblin man
Dogged her with gibe or curse
Or something worse:
But not one goblin skurried after,
Nor was she pricked by fear;
The kind heart made her windy-paced
That urged her home quite out of breath with haste
And inward laughter.

She cried, "Laura," up the garden.
"Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, **** my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."

Laura started from her chair,
Flung her arms up in the air,
Clutched her hair:
"Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted
For my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden,
Your young life like mine be wasted,
Undone in mine undoing,
And ruined in my ruin,
Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?" -
She clung about her sister,
Kissed and kissed and kissed her:
Tears once again
Refreshed her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast:
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast.
Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or like a caged thing freed,
Or like a flying flag when armies run.

Swift fire spread through her veins,
knocked at her heart
Met the fire smouldering there
And overbore its lesser flame;
She gorged on bitterness without a name:
Ah! fool, to choose such part
Of soul-consuming care!
Sense failed in the mortal strife:
Like the watch-tower of a town
Which an earthquake shatters down,
Like a lightning-stricken mast,
Like a wind-uprooted tree
Spun about,
Like a foam-topped waterspout
Cast down headlong in the sea,
She fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past,
Is it death or is it life?

Life out of death.
That night long Lizzie watched by her,
Counted her pulse's flagging stir,
Felt for her breath,
Held water to her lips, and cooled her face

The mystery of Life, the mystery
Of Death, I see
Darkly as in a glass;
Their shadows pass,
And talk with me.

As the flush of a Morning Sky,
As a Morning Sky colorless--
Each yields its measure of light
To a wet world or a dry;
Each fares through day to night
With equal pace,
And then each one
Is done.

As the Sun with glory and grace
In his face,
Benignantly hot,
Graciously radiant and keen,
Ready to rise and to run,--
Not without spot,
Not even the Sun.

As the Moon
On the wax, on the wane,
With night for her noon;
Vanishing soon,
To appear again.

As Roses that droop
Half warm, half chill, in the languid May,
And breathe out a scent
Sweet and faint;
Till the wind gives one swoop
To scatter their beauty away.

As Lilies a multitude,
One dipping, one rising, one sinking,
On rippling waters, clear blue
And pure for their drinking;
One new dead, and one opened anew,
And all good.

As a cankered pale Flower,
With death for a dower,
Each hour of its life half dead;
With death for a crown
Weighing down
Its head.

As an Eagle, half strength and half grace,
Most potent to face
Unwinking the splendor of light;
Harrying the East and the West,
Soaring aloft from our sight;
Yet one day or one night dropped to rest,
On the low common earth
Of his birth.

As a Dove,
Not alone,
In a world of her own
Full of fluttering soft noises
And tender sweet voices
Of love.

As a Mouse
Keeping house
In the fork of a tree,
With nuts in a crevice,
And an acorn or two;
What cares he
For blossoming boughs,
Or the song-singing bevies
Of birds in their glee,
Scarlet, or golden, or blue?

As a Mole grubbing underground;
When it comes to the light
It grubs its way back again,
Feeling no bias of fur
To hamper it in its stir,
Scant of pleasure and pain,
Sinking itself out of sight
Without sound.

As Waters that drop and drop,
Weariness without end,
That drop and never stop,
Wear that nothing can mend,
Till one day they drop--
Stop--
And there's an end,
And matters mend.

As Trees, beneath whose skin
We mark not the sap begin
To swell and rise,
Till the whole bursts out in green:
We mark the falling leaves
When the wide world grieves
And sighs.

As a Forest on fire,
Where maddened creatures desire
Wet mud or wings
Beyond all those things
Which could assuage desire
On this side the flaming fire.

As Wind with a sob and sigh
To which there comes no reply
But a rustle and shiver
From rushes of the river;
As Wind with a desolate moan,
Moaning on alone.

As a Desert all sand,
Blank, neither water nor land
For solace, or dwelling, or culture,
Where the storms and the wild creatures howl;
Given over to lion and vulture,
To ostrich, and jackal, and owl:
Yet somewhere an oasis lies;
There waters arise
To nourish one seedling of balm,
Perhaps, or one palm.

As the Sea,
Murmuring, shifting, swaying;
One time sunnily playing,
One time wrecking and slaying;
In whichever mood it be,
Worst or best,
Never at rest.

As still Waters and deep,
As shallow Waters that brawl,
As rapid Waters that leap
To their fall.

As Music, as Color, as Shape,
Keys of rapture and pain
Turning in vain
In a lock which turns not again,
While breaths and moments escape.

As Spring, all bloom and desire;
As Summer, all gift and fire;
As Autumn, a dying glow;
As Winter, with nought to show:

Winter which lays its dead all out of sight,
All clothed in white,
All waiting for the long-awaited light.

Beware the bitter idiot--
That fellow with the sour
    Mind,
Cankered by disillusion,
And feelings of
Left behind.

So life may not be everything
As planned--
It does, after all, arrive in
Installments called the day.
One of these is enough to try
    To understand,
One enough for this thin
Vessel of stardust clay.

His voice is but a drone,
Nothing but rancor and filth
    Ride upon his tongue.
Complaint the engine of his
    Tone,
The wormwood ballad of
Pitiful woe he sings and has
    Ever sung.

He will not be mistaken,
For the street tough is at his
    Very core.
He will not allow to awaken
The malleable man of his
    Youth and yore.

And so this fellow who has
Shut his soul off,
Stands in front of his mirror and cries.
He's too proud to unhand the
Lance of the scoff--
Boldness is his favorite lie.

This Skeleton knived me a Painful Score
Yet poked my Penances cry out deny
Longing to tape those Cankered Wounds formore
In Prayer breathe out another Saint's sigh
My Founding Friends, heirs to my Salvation
One whose Resources I facelessly extract
The Other - blend Virtue - shook Obsession
Wasted my Traits from Loyalty and Tact
So then, wailing softly, my Bleeding Throat
Ask your Lord's Mercy to concile me then
As a Year and a Bone suffice your Gloat
And demote me less than those Honoured Men.
There is one Birth hence; And a Rebirth haste
To Breathe once more; And leave my Shell to paste.

i.

Woe unto thee O' man, making woman thine thrall, beating her, bruising her, O' how God dost see it all. Woe unto thee making innocent toy-***-slaves, build thy Bunker's in thine deep caves, for thy statues and idols wilt be moth-eaten, cankered; just as thy silver and gold.

ii.

Woe unto thee O' man, taking innocent soul's, young men fight and die, whilst dear mother's cry, look to the sky's; for the signs of Prophecy art awake, stay alert O' elite men for how the ground is soon to quake.

iii.

Woe unto thee O' man, blasting bomb's in foreign lands, making robots human, and robots men; how technology hast become thine own savior. But thou shan't be saved, just running away, as thy streets wilt fill with the blood to be spilt and crumbling skyscrapers.

iv.

Woe unto thee O' man, spraying chemicals in ourn midst, slowly murdering the innocent; whilst thou drinketh toddlers cruor to keep alive another day.

v.

Woe unto thee O' man, pushing deception on TV, media puppets thou doth feed, CIA infiltration with thy greed. O' soon thy airwaves wilt be shocking. Thy earth
Wilt mourn like cradles rocking,
Making Christmas not of the
Messiah but of stockings,
Filled with lust and
Filth.

vi.

Woe unto thee O' man, grab some stilts, walk highly with thy head in the clouds, as thou hath all pride and None shame.

vii.

Woe unto thee O' man, for thou knowest not pain, for what's coming to this sphere shalt make men's hearts fail them.

viii.

Woe unto thee O' man, judgements art coming as I shalt detail some thing's as
For me to thee I was sent. Quakes in high
Magnitude, an Antichrist and his false
Prophet, whom shalt rule for seven year's,
A mark of the beast (RFID chip) in the forehead and right hand, don't yet shed none tears yet for these things all were
Planned. A one world religion coming
Together as the false prophet wilt make,
The last 113th Pope is here, many lies
He gives and takes. Predicted by two
Saint Malachi's, of the last great deciever
Of the Church; he gathers all religions as the Bible dost sayest, so don't let thy feelings get hurt. All religions wilt gather, after the rapture of the church, the rapture is Jesus Christ rescuing his People, from the Antichrists coming scorch. As in the moment in the twinkling of an eye, believers in Jesus Christ like bird's wilt disappear and fly, high in the clouds to meet ourn Lord in the air, news channels wilt be reporting (MILLIONS PLUS MISSING) MANY NOT HERE!) The Antichrist is here now, he wilt soon (return) many will bow to an image made for him during the seven years of God's judgement that shalt be felt-heard. The Antichrist shalt hath anyone killed who doesn't worship his fatal image, for anyone whom takes his mark (RFID chip) wilt be eternally ****** for hells own wishes. Though Christ didst not come for to judge the world, but to save, the sinners, all humanity, were all sinner's on display. For Christ died on that cross, was mocked spat upon, beard ripped out, holes in wrists and feet, after his soul left his body the sun turned dark, the moon blood the Earth's shook for his own People killed gods son, the only name that gets thee to heaven; Yeshua hamashiach ( Jesus the Messiah) alpha, Omega, beginning and end. Life of living water, bread from heaven. He's always the same yesterday and today. As must I sayest to fireballs shalt come, and tsunamis so high people can't run. War wilt be nuclear as battles shalt rage in Israel, Christ came not for thy damnation as thou hath been taught, he came to save the soul. The Lord said ( I am the way truth and the life, no man cometh to the father God but by me,) that means only through Jesus, gods son, canst thou be free. Theres none other escape from these things coming to pass and things to be. Salvation was payed on that cross for thou and me. Now it's they own decision where thou Wilt spend eternity, a very real hell descibed in death and ourn gospels seen. Yet don't take mine word reader, thou canst try to ignore all the day, I just came to tell thee who died for thee, Yeshua (Jesus) his name. There's much more I couldst sayest but I'll leave thee with this, John 3:16,( For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.) He opens his arm's to thee O' reader, it's time to make thy choice, the morrow
Might not be here for thee, Christ offers
These words with his voice.

© Brandon nagley
© Lonesome poet's poetry

Anigh, is the darkling of the effrontery eagle, effaced, replaced; it's worship towards the devil. Gallons of blood, used as cover, ash and mud; defiling of ****** mother's. Gallizing men drowned in sweetness of drunkened friends. Gamins created by cankered loot, oil fills the pockets; diamonds make slaves to. Gangrels run kingdom's from their ancestral hand-me-downs, gaolers imprison innocents, whilst thy rulers throw ****** for babes at compounds. Innovators; mocking God's name. Mixing men with robotics, keeping the pure obscured, locking animals in a cage. Inorbing creation with cameras as eyes, like rats they scurry, hide; when the truth is knocking. Like a drunkard; This circular hell shalt rock as a ship, many planet's art approaching, none help shalt thou get.

©Brandon nagley
©lonesome poet's poetry
©prophetic poetry.

Word meanings:
Anigh: near.
Darkling: growing darkness.
effrontery: shameless.
Eagle: the united states.
Effaced: erased, forgotten.
Gallizing: add water plus sugar to make stronger wine from grape juice.
Gamins: neglected boy left to the streets.
Gangrel: vagrant, loose built person.
Gaoler: jailer.
Whilst:while.
Thy:your.
Inorb: encircle, surround.
Circular hell: earth.
Art:are.

Because of you, everything I touch,
Bleeds and turns to dust
I want to **** you first,
Because a broken blade singes, feels good with a ******

Against my wrist.

Your German tongue, I can't bare
Not a single word without a snare
Your Aryan sly,
Your black gutted soul.

Go away, I say
Go away,

You come as swiftly as you stay,
You bruited, withered man
I tried to burry you in the sand
With the Pacific ocean, we found sacred

Ah, to crush your brittle skull with my fair hands

The empty vessel that lies,
My brother's fears, my mother's tears
My sister's sorrow
Her disposition that fallows

Go away, I say
Go away, you shadow of a man

Your skin is already cankered
Your hair thin and gray
Spitting tobacco out the window
Passing by your old church


Your God you hold so sacred,
Hates what he sees naked.
How ironic,
As you fill your stomach, with gin and tonics


Your only son,  drenched in your malice
His confused identity, at your callus
Your worst fear, your biggest secret
I see what you left behind, in his tender cries

Your drunk is merely a symptom.

My mother's wisdom
Trying to gather strength to circulate the essence
Of her household kingdom,
Yet, destroyed at the presence

You left her, pavement scratched.

Busted blood vessels, continuous contusions
Led to the comfort of capsules
Trying to mend the thrash
Laying in front of her children on the hard, wooden floors

You demon of destruction
With death in your demise,

How your lover's family feels
As you dragged her heals
Into her watery grave
For you, it's not a worry; you think your God will save

Now it is time.
Take your pride,
The evil you hide.
As your golden ticket to hell

Alas, you’re dead
No fragmented memories shrouding my brain
No more drugs, no more pain
FREE, of the demented ways

I am the murderer now

Like a giant Sequoia tree, well aged and outwardly still tall and firmly anchored                                        
I proudly display, my outer senescent bark, but inside, I’m pitted and cankered

Still majestic and straight, branches spread, with fingered needles reaching for the sky                            
But at each limb joint, those cracks lay hidden; not yet visible, to the naked eye

Those blisters ravage and rage, at my inner trunk; but not, so you can clearly see                                                                                    
Hidden by the sap; like those morning rheum tears, which seep out and crust on me

I reach skyward, extend my branches to the sun; my sieve tubes there unplugged                                                                                  
But below, my veins congested, and my arteries full of sap, are fully clogged  

And yet I stand, without an outward tremble; disguising well the tremors in my roots                                  
With all my strength, I will them hold; do not cede, to the pain that in them shoots                                                        

I will perceiver; not able to bend with the wind, I stand firm still; until I break                                              
Stiffen my resolve; until my fluids coagulate, and rigor mortise does me overtake                                
BOEMS BY JA 397

Before we read or speak or rest further,
you owe promise to a favor–

I want you to walk directly out of your door
during the most lucid scene of day,
or the most haunting moment of inner-night
Walk until your feet come to a
                        sudden
                        instinctive
                        halt
Listen to clamor, or
whatever surrounds you
Lift all volumes of your
                        puja
                        quietude
                        as a psalm
Focus on humanities scrapings
or the long graceful stroke of
matriarchal firman in her most
                        peculiar
                        stage
                        of cankered innocence
Lecture the calamity of her fictionless plot and
digest what the spiritually deaf cannot, and allow it to
find what triggers you the hardest
                        what
                        gouges
                        the prompts threadbare
It may be the indifferent hiss of cars passing
and it may be the expression plastering the jaw
of all of that unprocessed energy
                        ambling
                        on
                        by
It may even be the weather spilt
from her majesties
archaic entrails
Something will eventually do you in
but it ultimately
takes practice at varying degrees

I've done it when I was awake
I've done it in dreams
Either way
there's more mirrored in fragmented cohesion
                        than it
                        quite often
                        seems

The last time I saw Fred.....


On his last leg’s
zimmer- framed
& proudly vertical

The fist
of cankered gristle
removed
at a cost
but he
noble soldier
farmer
grand-father
man
was insistent
He would walk
with me
to the toilet

And he did
with dignity
a joke
& splendid bravery

Claret-stained kiss from maiden impure,
Cruel, burning pain, she craved more!
Hath taken my life from heaven’s eye,
Thy cankered night, in which I’ve died!

I once held  a clutch of unhappiness,
in a field of corn flowers
as leaves blew cankered with rust,
if only  Autumns white shadows 
would cross the stubble fields
and by the morning light a wondrous hamlet
would be strolled upon
that would be reason enough
to dream into the realms of the possible
reinventing  brightness unbowed.

Greenfield Village

Henry Ford looms large
The length of River Rouge
Lower and Middle and Upper and Rouge River proper
Abraded by scars
Mouth cankered and scowling
Zug Island wrenched
To a permanent sneer behind
The kid gloved hand of his beloved Fairlane
Wandering Potemkin near the end
Head an empty lot webbed
In figure eights of snowy plaque.
We walked down the lane
From Firestone Farm
Past stubble field
Late one winter afternoon
Searching for the rope swing
In the old chestnut tree
Ordered hung there perhaps
By the old man himself.
I raced twilight
Edges dissolving
Sent you higher and higher
Prayed you would catch a glimpse
Of abiding light that silvers
The edge the world.

In this cracked bower of dusted morn,
Under crinkled leaves of cankered scorn,
Thine promise hath ruptured in purulent bliss;
Innards devoured with one poisoned kiss!
In death’s cruel grasp, spring bid adieu,
Such an ill-fate bestowed upon thee so soon!
Writhing in the pain from this soiled vow,
Revenge is waiting, won’t thy surrender now?

At least in Kind your Warming Smile resign
Whilst holding your Excellent Pig unique
Though some in sense note One's Finger design
Cause such subtle but dastardly Technique
And Rage you caused; Though the Baby's Tears buy
Breach whatever Spending Frame you present
That Image - think of Valhalla's Dames sigh
Let much of your ******* to grin your Assent
And knowing indeed how Innocence bears
Which by your Labours allowed in your Growth
Raise with Prudence; Then quench your Partner's Fears
To let Vestal Virgins sleep on your Worth.
It would have been Brilliant your Foul Stokes indeed
Than wear Cankered Masks to infect your Seed.

We came in through the undergrowth
To a patch of blasted trees,
Then checked the radiation that
Had brought earth to its knees,
The skyscrapers were gaunt and tall
They rose like a cankered cell,
Of shattered forms, all overgrown
With a **** spawned straight from hell.

Then Roach said that we should wait awhile,
Make sure it had stabilised,
We’d seen what happened to men before
When they glowed, before our eyes,
But that had been thirty years before,
When men had made mistakes,
We’d not seen a man since we began
Living on rats and snakes.

I vaguely recalled the woman thing
That had held me in her arms,
Who cooed and cried when the lightning died
And the bells shrieked in alarm,
But we hadn’t seen a woman thing
For years, for they all died out,
It was something to do with ovaries
And things we don’t know about.

We’d met as a pair of ragamuffins
Roaming over the plains,
Hiding under a hollow tree
To avoid the acid rains,
Our skin was scarred, and our life was hard
But we managed to survive,
And now, as far as we knew we were
The only men alive.

I knew she’d read from the Bible for
That was a woman thing,
She taught me plenty of words back then
And showed me scribbling,
So I read fragments to Roach who said
He’d had something called a sis,
I had a piece of a Bible, torn
That was just called Genesis.

We smiled at the thought of a world that was
Quite empty, just as now,
But set in a fabulous garden with
A God, we’d find somehow,
And in there was the name of a man
My woman thing gave to me,
And while he slept, the God man kept
A rib, and he called it Eve.

The city that lay before us may
Have well been Babylon,
But silent now and deserted with
Its ancient people gone,
We wandered into its cluttered streets
And we saw the things of men,
All scaled with rust and a loss of trust
It would never come again.

It was there that we found a woman thing
Who was scarred, and scared as well,
For she’d never seen a man before
And thought that we’d come from hell,
She sat, backed into a corner,
And begging us both to leave,
But I said I was known as Adam, so
She must have been known as Eve.

And then that night, we had a fight
I committed a mortal sin,
I killed my friend as he went to bend
Over the woman thing,
And God roared out with his thunder,
I would always be to blame,
And then decreed in my hour of need
I would call my first son Cain.

David Lewis Paget

cankered by self
centred bullseyes.
target
for arrows fledged
from dead wings.

love could be
nylon now.
sores do not
care if
instruments are false.

strung between the
hurt now and
some notion
of then words
flow.

do they salve
or do they
sear the flesh
stretched
weeping
consequence
of loving.

words if to sear
should find ear
who made one so ...
strange.

words if to salve
should not halve
loves joy into
loss.

love is purposed . true
to words that are not used
as whips or leashes.

no fertile ground
in words bound
to regret.