"carven" poems
I.
the emperor
sleeps in a palace of porphyry
which was a million years building
he takes the air in a howdah
of jasper beneath saffron
umbrellas
upon an elephant
twelve foot high
behind whose ear
sits always a crowned
king twir-
ling an
ankus of
ebony
the fountains of the emperor’s
palace run sunlight and
moonlight and the emperor’s
elephant is a thousand years old
the harem of
the emperor
is carpeted with
gold cloth
from the
ceiling(one
diamond timid
with nesting incense)
fifty
marble
pillars
slipped from immeasurable
height,fall,fifty,silent
in the incense is tangled a cool moon
there are thrice-three-hundred
doors carven of chalcedony and
before every door a naked
****** watches
on their heads turbans of a hundred
colours
in their hands scimitars like windy torches
each
is
blacker than oblivion
the ladies
of the emperor’s
harem are queens
of all the earth and the rings
upon their hands are from mines
a mile deep
but the body of
the queen of queens is
more transparent
than water,she is softer than birds
2.
when the emperor is very
amorous he reclines upon
the couch of couches and
beckons with
the little
finger of his left
hand
then the
thrice-three-hundredth
door is opened by the tallest
****** and the queen
of queens comes
forth
ankles
musical with large pearls
kingdoms in her ears
at the feet of
the emperor a cithern-
player squats with
quiveringgold
body
behind
the emperor ten
elected warriors with
bodies of lazy jade
and twitching
eyelids
finger
their
unquiet
spears
the queen of queens is dancing
her subtle
body weaving
insinuating upon the gold cloth
incessantly creates patterns of sudden
lust
her
stealing body ex-
pending gathering pouring upon itself stiffenS
to a
white thorn
of desire
the taut neck of the citharede wags
in the dust the ghastly warriors
amber with lust breathe
together the emperor,exerting
himself among his pillows throws
jewels at the queen of queens and
white money upon her nakedness
he
nods
and all
depart through the bruised air aflutter with pearls
3.
they are
alone
he beckons,she rises she
stands
a moment
in the passion of the fifty
pillars
listening
while the queens of all the
earth writhe upon deep rugs
11.2k
The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.
He named the nameless hills and dells;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear,
As gems upon a silver thread,
Above the shadow of his head
The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder Days before the fall.
Of mighty kings of Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away;
The world was fair in Durin's Day.
A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shone for ever fair and bright.
There hammer on the anvil smote,
There chisel clove, and graver wrote,
There forged was blade, and bound was hilt;
The delver mined, the mason built,
There beryl, pearl, and opal pale,
And metal wrought like fishes' mail,
Buckler and corslet, axe and sword,
And shining spears were laid in hoard.
Unwearied then were Durin's folk;
Beneath the mountains music woke:
The harpers harped, the minstrels sang
And at the gates the trumpets rang.
The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge's fire is ashen cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls,
The darkness dwells in Durin's halls;
The shadow lies upon his tomb
In Moria, in Khazad-dûm.
But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from sleep.
4.6k
The red-capped Cock-Man has just announced morning;
The Keeper of the Robes brings Jade-Cloud Furs;
Heaven's nine doors reveal the palace and its courtyards;
And the coats of many countries bow to the Pearl Crown.
Sunshine has entered the giants' carven palms;
Incense wreathes the Dragon Robe:
The audience adjourns-and the five-coloured edict
Sets girdle-beads clinking toward the Lake of the Phoenix.
3k
Let me straddle your mind until I'm confined
to the empty spaces you refuse to acknowledge ,
taking hostage the inhabitants of this grand mental escape ,
I equate this mission to landing on the moon - you consume
every fiber of my being I intrude ,
wishing to know what you are thinking
it sort of ****** me off when you choose *** over celibacy
just assume it's my jealousy I'd rather have your mind than head
as we lay here in bed I listen to the breath that escapes the dark carven of your lips ,
you kiss me so softly with vocabulary I hear clearly how deep you crave me,
such a sweet sentiment from a sapio ******
someone who can fornicate my mental with intellectual ,
you eat out my riddles and digest philophosy
have me shaking feeling close to God see ,
we get bare naked to the truth
Exposing absolute equations and reasons why , I sigh .
Gagging on your brilliance
you present such increments of human creativity ,
swallowing your mysteries
stroke me close and slow
fill me to capacity with the knowledge of you
tell me the truth you love to **** me
with your words You encourage this insanity
This perplexing wet whirl of words gushes ,
and i demand to see the length of your lyrical havoc
I wish to kiss and grab the sensual sentences you string together
& nothing could compare to the pleasure when we intertwine our minds .
It's ridiculous how meticulous you are with my mental
we lay there , gasping sinful in sections of ecstasy
i watch you vividly , react to my melodic passion
i hold on - grasping my fingertips around your brain
you dig deeper and in pain i give you my vunerability
I .LET . YOU . FEEL . ME
speaking languages I forgot i knew
yet I know I cant dispute
our connection from confessing the truth
you sparked theories bigger than any bang
articulating art using slang
we decode out way of conduct
it was just pure luck we ****** through conversation
Jun 6, 2018
Jun 6, 2018 at 3:23 AM UTC
[These statues were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum after the sculptor's death. The figures alluded to are the famous statue of Abraham Lincoln, and the monument in memory of Mrs. Henry Adams, the original of which is in the Rock Creek Cemetery at Washington. --Max Eastman]
POET, thy dreams are grateful to the air
And the light loves them. Tho' they murmur not,
Their carven stillness is a music rare,
And like the song of one whose tongue hath caught
The clear ethereal essence of his thought.
I hear the talkers come, the changing throngs
That with the fashions of a day surround
Thy visions, and I hear them quell their tongues,
And hush their querulous shoes upon the ground;
Thy dreams are with the crown of silence crowned--
Though they feel not the glowing diadem,
Who sleep for aye in their cool shapes of stone.
Nor ever will the sunlight waken them,
Nor ever will they turn their eyes and moan,
To think that their brief Poet's life is gone.
The tender and the lofty soul is gone,
Who eyed them forth from darkness, and confessed
His spirit's motion in unmoving stone.
His praise upon no mortal tongue doth rest;
By these unwhispering lips it is expressed.
Soon will the ample arms of night withdraw
Her shuffling children from the twilit hall--
From that heroic presence, in dim awe
Of whom the dark withholds a while her pall,
And leaves him luminous above them all.
Then are ye lost in darkness and alone,
Ye ghostly spirits! And the moment rare
Doth quicken that too sad and nameless stone,
To move her robe, and spill her sable hair,
And be in silence mingled with the air;
For she is one with the dim glimmering hour,
And the white spirits beautiful and still,
And the veiled memory of the vanished power
That moulded them, the high and infinite will
That earth begets and earth does not fulfil.
2.2k
There is darkness behind the light -- and the pale light drips
Cold on vague shapes and figures, that, half-seen loom
Like the carven prows of proud, far-triumphing ships --
And the firelight wavers and changes about the room,
As the three logs crackle and burn with a small still sound;
Half-blotting with dark the deeper dark of her hair,
Where she lies, head pillowed on arm, and one hand curved round
To shield the white face and neck from the faint thin glare.
Gently she breathes -- and the long limbs lie at ease,
And the rise and fall of the young, slim, virginal breast
Is as certain-sweet as the march of slow wind through trees,
Or the great soft passage of clouds in a sky at rest.
I kneel, and our arms enlace, and we kiss long, long.
I am drowned in her as in sleep. There is no more pain.
Only the rustle of flames like a broken song
That rings half-heard through the dusty halls of the brain.
One shaking and fragile moment of ecstasy,
While the grey gloom flutters and beats like an owl above.
And I would not move or speak for the sea or the sky
Or the flame-bright wings of the miraculous Dove!
1.9k
[by Edna St. Vincent Millay]
Forever over now, forever, forever gone
That day. Clear and diminished like a scene
Carven in Cameo, the lighthouse, and the cove between
The sandy cliffs, and the boat drawn up on the beach;
And the long skirt of a lady innocent and young,
Her hand resting on her ***** her head hung;
And the figure of a man in earnest speech.
Clear and diminished like a scene cut in cameo
The lighthouse, and the boat on the beach, and the two shapes
Of the woman and the man; lost like the lost day
Are the words that passed, and the pain,-discarded, cut away
From the stone, as from the memory the heat of the tears escapes.
O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure;
From the action of the waves and from the action of sorrow forever secure,
White against a ruddy cliff you stand, chalcedony on sard.
Sep 21, 2017
Sep 21, 2017 at 9:50 AM UTC
A friend of mine asks,
“Why do you only ever write about romance lately?”
Well, the answer is quite simple, really. It is because I have tasted it.
I tasted it when my eyes first drank the light from his grace when he stood tall above me
His saturnine windows called out to me behind flesh curtains whenever he spoke, ever asking me to join him in his ecstasy
He, from a distance, darted towards me and pressed our sides together—letting myself melt in the velveteen touch of fabric skin
There was a shower of momentary light that night but only his radiance did I bask in.
I tasted it in the heart of the stone city where usurpers of old stood on polished stone
The Bulwark’s adobe reach embraced our reverie as memories from sleep stories become reality
He, in the confines of that venerable fortress, made me vulnerable for I was secure in his arms
His fingers are in between my own like woven mithril unbreakable lest he broke its bond himself
It is in this kingdom of carven stone and handmade walls that he sang of ardor with a dragon’s petrifying gaze.
I tasted it in yuletide storms where men and women waged war with happiness and grief
When the armies of pain and suffering fell at our clasped hands and cheeks red from amorous verve you said you were to journey home
But you did not let go of my grasp
With me you remained and in your arms I stayed
As the bitter winds of bigoted mouths blew, as the fire from damnation is declared by self-righteous souls, we stood fast in the storm.
I tasted it when he said our love he could no longer endure
There we sat, on a tarnished vehicle, as the last of our love gave into rust
What is frightening to me peeked from his saturnine eyes and he closed his curtains shut for the downpour of despondency was to come
We flooded our façades and the rivers quaked our emotional integrity
He held my hand for one final chance before we ripped our wrappings forever apart and he kissed me tender
Our lips made love—like the first they ever met in weathered heat—for the last time.
I tasted it when I told him “Just do so, when your appetite roars to love me again,” and until now I am waiting.
So, why do I ever only write about romance lately?
Well, the reason is quite complicated, really. But–but it is because I’ve tasted it.
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 2:00 PM UTC
Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.
We are like music, each voice of it pursuing
A golden separate dream, remote, persistent,
Climbing to fire, receding to hoarse despair.
What do you whisper, brother? What do you tell me? . . .
We pass each other, are lost, and do not care.
One mounts up to beauty, serenely singing,
Forgetful of the steps that cry behind him;
One drifts slowly down from a waking dream.
One, foreseeing, lingers forever unmoving . . .
Upward and downward, past him there, we stream.
One has death in his eyes: and walks more slowly.
Death, among jonquils, told him a freezing secret.
A cloud blows over his eyes, he ponders earth.
He sees in the world a forest of sunlit jonquils:
A slow black poison huddles beneath that mirth.
Death, from street to alley, from door to window,
Cries out his news,--of unplumbed worlds approaching,
Of a cloud of darkness soon to destroy the tower.
But why comes death,--he asks,--in a world so perfect?
Or why the minute's grey in the golden hour?
Music, a sudden glissando, sinister, troubled,
A drift of wind-torn petals, before him passes
Down jangled streets, and dies.
The bodies of old and young, of maimed and lovely,
Are slowly borne to earth, with a dirge of cries.
Down cobbled streets they come; down huddled stairways;
Through silent halls; through carven golden doorways;
From freezing rooms as bare as rock.
The curtains are closed across deserted windows.
Earth streams out of the shovel; the pebbles knock.
Mary, whose hands rejoiced to move in sunlight;
Silent Elaine; grave Anne, who sang so clearly;
Fugitive Helen, who loved and walked alone;
Miriam too soon dead, darkly remembered;
Childless Ruth, who sorrowed, but could not atone;
Jean, whose laughter flashed over depths of terror,
And Eloise, who desired to love but dared not;
Doris, who turned alone to the dark and cried,--
They are blown away like windflung chords of music,
They drift away; the sudden music has died.
And one, with death in his eyes, comes walking slowly
And sees the shadow of death in many faces,
And thinks the world is strange.
He desires immortal music and spring forever,
And beauty that knows no change.
1.6k
There is no lord within my heart,
Left silent as an empty shrine
Where rose and myrtle intertwine,
Within a place apart.
No god is there of carven stone
To watch with still approving eyes
My thoughts like steady incense rise;
I dream and weep alone.
But if I keep my altar fair,
Some morning I shall lift my head
From roses deftly garlanded
To find the god is there.
1.5k
Kiyahaga jane, Kiyahaga,
The entrance is narrow,
Enter in; up the stairway
Of adamant wing's from
Cherubic sparrow's. Here
Mine love, there's none
Need to weareth aged
Flesh.
Inena, to the place of godly rest.
Thou shalt be made a dress,
From intangible material;
A pattern of the past,
Present, and future;
A glowing touch
Surreal.
Nasgigwo Winigalsd, Nasgigwo Winigalsd;
Carven prayer's shalt reach the great one's
Throne, intertwined we'll be, with peace as
Home; worries none more, no skin nor bone
Shalt pass this zone, of angelic habitation.
Gvgeyu, Gvgeyu
O' we shalt love, a purest truth;
Galohisdi Hisdugi, come on through-
Thou art me, me thee, spiritual blood
Releasing.
©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl jane Nagley ( àgapi mou) dedicated
Jun 24, 2016
Jun 24, 2016 at 9:25 PM UTC
*She breathes and flirts with my loneliness,
Drinking from the last lights of heaven.
She weaves and braids a wreath of weariness
As Nyx drops a grey cloak o'er the even
And hides Pans' wild heaths and gardens carven.
Pale spirits drenched in afternoon rain
Flee, from the peerless eyes, driven
By other senses, less fickle, less vain
And who sing in a sweeter tongue of the pain
As Aoelus revets a mantle of shadows
And raving fragrances burst into the night,
She takes my hand, and leads me through the echoes
To her dominion, where she flaunts her might.
Here she commands genii to an aery flight,
Possessing the high grasses into a trance,
An angry hoard, out to a ghostly fight,
Their spears, like white fires, swirl and dance,
Puppets in a belligerent romance.
Over this multitude, pale and hectic red,
Cairns stand, overgrown with moss and flowers,
Silent guardians of childhood mirth long fled.
Over these, do I feel, the weight of hours
For the first time. Her touch shrivels and sours
Over my skin, as locks of a wailing cloud
Prophesy of black rain, of bleak powers,
And of the dark hours that enshroud
The lost joys, forever broken and bowed.*
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 11:36 AM UTC
„...my men in moleskin caps and generally envested in the kind of shabby paramilitary fashion in which one pictures the advance guard at Teruel. Upon proceeding inland, we encountered teams of what I declared native-cannibal-warriors, who, despite being outwardly quite docile, were clearly displeased with the unannounced invasion of their little isle. I began pointing my finger at the savages and emitting ‘pow’ noises, causing the natives to rather cooperatively collapse to the ground by heaps. Having cleared the beachhead, I then realised my love for our apparent guide to this strange paradise, an ermine-like species without any name that comes to memory. I held her close for perhaps five minutes, stroking her luscious, snow-white pelt and ignoring the jealous glances of my subordinates. An anxious look told me she had something to tell me. I bent my ear close, only to receive a sudden impact of her delicate, immaculately carven jaw. Shocked, I relinquished my hold, and she immediately bounded to a low-lying tree behind me, pawing the fruit dangling therefrom with a feline relish“
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 8:32 PM UTC
I like the colors in your eyes
Like deepest wells and darkest skies
I like the way your sparkle-splashed pupils
Fade and flash and grow and shrink
Deepen with the things you think
Widen after every blink
Confiding in that oily ink
The truth you cannot say.
I like the wrinkles in your face
Wrought with rage and gilded grace
I like the way they dance with emotion
Pride and anger, joy and peace
Caught in every carven crease
Conforming to your soul's caprice
Tension trying to release
The truth you cannot say.
Oct 15, 2010
Oct 15, 2010 at 7:20 PM UTC
The age of men has morning seen,
A blessed hour, pure and new,
When all was fresh and bright and green,
And clad with sparkling drops of dew,
That caught the neonatal light,
Proceeding from the infant star,
That gave to men the gift of sight
And bathed the darkling isles afar.
The age of men has midday known,
And man has seen his golden years,
But monuments of carven stone
And kingdoms forged with swords and spears,
Cannot endure, but pass away.
The years of men are but a breath,
The evening swallows up the day,
And all is swallowed up in death.
The age of men rolls on and on,
The land grows darker year by year,
The chariot of Phaeton and Helios shall disappear,
Then darkness shall o’erspread the land,
A spectral, phantom moon shall rise,
Until a black and withered hand
Shall cover heaven’s watching eyes.
Then blackest night shall cover all,
And darkness will the ruler be,
And in his blindness man will fall
And wish that he had turned to me.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 6:49 AM UTC
Where bright blood flowed
across my carven chest,
I now feel only
warm, tropic raindrops.
Impassive priests once stood here,
clad in gold and feathers,
obsidian knives dripping gore.
And now a bored child sulks,
kicking at wet pebbles,
dragged unwilling to my side
by tourist parents.
Turning away, he spits pink
gum into my granite bowl.
There was a time when
I would have had
his beating heart.
Mar 19, 2019
Mar 19, 2019 at 6:14 AM UTC
What happens the first instant
after our world's end
Is everything still, the pendulum
that lost its surly swing
Does the carven clock sit idle,
not quite enough cuck
to manage one more koo—
But still there’s something left
Or is it a different sort of spring,
not then unwinding fate
But coiling tightly, tighter still
until it snaps, breaks free
Destroys the maker’s hand,
rips down the veil of heaven
And damning every prophet,
sheds wild starlight, wand'ring still
Sep 13, 2015
Sep 13, 2015 at 1:12 AM UTC
The lonely bard sits
in the shade of a tree
strumming his lute
for you and me
he has been rhyming for quite some time
born with a gift
he plays, and plays
his fingers so swift
Alas, no one will pass
but he keeps on playing
he will stay here forever
even when his body starts decaying
He has become a legend
but what is left to see
a finely carven lute
resting next to a tree
Jan 15, 2021
Jan 15, 2021 at 1:23 PM UTC
Some seals are applied to signatures and such
Ratifying the documents of abbots and kings
Applied with dignity, a royal touch
From carven images or profiled rings
And then there are seals as toilet bowl rings
Beneath the throne, a regal crown of wax
One of the kingdom’s many needful things
Restraining with dignity certain personal acts
The throne upon which His Majesty, um, sits
Unsealed it came, and gave the plumber royal fits
Jul 9, 2019
Jul 9, 2019 at 3:50 PM UTC
Excluded to me
Only one who sees
Wrong
Ever has our approach been
So flawed all along
So few willing to change
Reevaluate courses
Of action we take
Can’t unmake
The creationist’s stance
Just evolve
To sustain in the acid rain
Storm we dissolve
Or we starve
Carven stone
Of our monument reads
But a testament to
Our insatiable greed
Sep 21, 2022
Sep 21, 2022 at 1:14 AM UTC
He did not shrink from duties call
for King and country gave his all,
when in the battle he did fall
and was buried in the deep.
He’s been there now for many a year
he cannot see, he does not hear,
safe in the ocean’s keep.
Even the gulls cry overhead
does not disturb his watery bed
he is so very very dead,
down in his watery sleep.
He has no child to count the cost,
no tombstone with a carven cross.
Only his widow feels the loss
of her sailor boy in blue.
A flowery wreath on a windswept sea
on his anniversary,
he’s nought but a distant memory
to those who held him dear.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 7:21 AM UTC
Ancient dreames fly in the face of the fire,
The Aer of the flame carven crystal Grove:
Tireless unstoppable force; repoire borne said
Again anew drifting morphing--
Snowflakes dart express in the sylvan dark,
Pushed madly by yawning Boreal wind,
Streaking in countless trains, innumerable
Gleaming vessels in the Steel Lamplight,
Pouring through the vista syncopated by
Silhouetted pines.
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 3:51 PM UTC
Into canvas landscape
to mirror journey I shall paint.
With word pigments as poet
sharing a mirror of self.
Sometimes colors are bright,
giving air of peacefulness for eyes.
Other times dark like night,
exposing just a glimmer of hope
from stars.
Tonight, I paint as hand heavy
lifts pen-like brush.
Grey’s for sadness
inside breath.
Red for pain of heart
from loss.
Brown for mud stuck to feet
feeling trapped.
Black for despair
that shadows me.
Tiny yellow specks for tinge of hope.
I paint to express
from deep carven forged from past.
Perhaps tomorrow my colorant will change.
Dec 1, 2018
Dec 1, 2018 at 6:24 AM UTC