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I
Ancestral Houses
SURELY among a rich man s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not Sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.
Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;
But when the master's buried mice can play.
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.
O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,
But take our greatness with our violence?
What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,
And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors
Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,
But take our greatness with our bitterness?

II
My House
An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing Stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;
A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.
Two men have founded here.  A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwinding score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My ****** heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.

III
My Table
Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged.  In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where 'twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
Me soul's unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door,
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country's talk
For silken clothes and stately walk.
Had waking wits; it seemed
Juno's peacock screamed.

IV
My Descendants
Having inherited a vigorous mind
From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
And leave a woman and a man behind
As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there's but common greenness after that.
And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless min that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky.
The primum Mobile that fashioned us
Has made the very owls in circles move;
And I, that count myself most prosperous,
Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.
V
The Road at My Door
An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.
A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear-tree broken by the storm.
I count those feathered ***** of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream.
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.

VI
The Stare's Nest by My Window
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the state.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no cleat fact to be discerned:
Come build in he empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More Substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

VII
I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's
Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness
I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone,
A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,
Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon
That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable,
A glittering sword out of the east.  A puff of wind
And those white glimmering fragments of the mist
sweep by.
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.
"Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
"Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or
in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading
wide
For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray
Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried
For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay.
Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their
eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes.  No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess;
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full
Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine,
The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or
of lace,
Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean,
Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place
To brazen hawks.  Nor self-delighting reverie,
Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone,
Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency,
The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the
moon.
I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair
Wonder how many times I could have proved my
worth
In something that all others understand or share;
But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth
A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,
It had but made us pine the more.  The abstract joy,
The half-read wisdom of daemonic images,
Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.
Aa Harvey Sep 2018
This is my Blood Bowl.


Thank you Games Workshop for giving us Blood Bowl;
I’ve played it all my life and I’ve completely re-written the rules.
It allows my imagination to run wild carrying a sword,
Attacking all sorts of creatures, whilst playing American Football.
It has magic, magic items and you may think it’s just for kids;
But without Blood Bowl,
I wouldn’t have imagined half of the things that I did.


People need a release from the real world;
Mine is found on a football pitch in the game of Blood Bowl.
People cheat, steal and bribe referees and do almost anything.
If you give this game to your kid,
They could imagine the impossible
And some day, maybe, write random poetry like me!  He, he.


…And now down to the pitch to see the kickoff!...


The humans line up against the bad boy orcs;
The dwarfs and elves are in support.
Chaos lords and chaos spawn (twisted creatures);
Rain down pain and death on the undead and the living.


The undead walk slowly, the goblins flee!
Rat Ogres and trolls are invading the pitch!
The referee blows his whistle to send the giant off!
The deadly dark elves chop the referee’s up with chainsaws,
Or use swords and axes, grenades and clubs.
They are all fighting to win the B.B.C. cup.


The Blood Bowl Championship;
It’s like the NFL Superbowl trophy.
I’ve made leagues and cups
And every single thing possible, just for fun; just for me.


The Official Blood Bowl Organization,
Try to make all weapons illegal, but oh no, no, no!
This is the sport of death!  
This is Blood Bowl!


Use spells and magic items and cause suffering;
The tiny snotling is beaten by the little Halfling.
The ***** in there somewhere, though nobody cares;
The Beastmen are just here to fight,
Whilst the gnomes laugh at the high elves hair.
Such pampered fools, in love with themselves;
Vanity and self-love?  That must be the elves.


Here comes a chaos dwarf, driving a steam roller;
He flattens the Fimir and another vampire.
The zombies are clueless and one fumbles the ball,
Before he is decapitated, by the Reikland Reavers’ Mighty Zug!


The ghoul’s are hungry for blood;
Here come the orks, the band of goffs.
Crazy *** gitz, just having a laugh.
Here are the sneaky Skaven to stab someone in the back.


Amazonian women are running around screaming,
Like the banshee’s and all sorts of scary demons.
The Sisters of Battle are from the future;
A bear charges at a Treeman and look!  There’s a little Gnoblar.


Giant bats, giant snails, giant rats and giant eagles,
Giant leeches, giant frogs, giant spiders and giant scorpions.
The norse are Vikings, (ranked titles include kings);
There’s a termagant from the year 40,000 and something.
There are space marines, and space wolf marines,
All armed to the teeth with weapons.


The genestealer’s steal genes to make new creatures/weapons;
There are evil gnomes, evil ewoks, ewoks and evil Treemen.
Lesser demons fight lesser goblins and run from the Lictor!
The werebear’s and werewolves fight the wolves and Saurus creatures.
There is no victor.


The skinks fire poisoned blowpipes at the Large beasts & minions.
Chaos Halflings beat up people on camels and horses
And they beat up Khemri with anything.
Mummies climb out of their crypts to bring death to the mutants;
The slayers are here to bring down the mighty bone giants.


The noble Brettonians see Blue and Pink Horrors running around;
Tyranids, Tyranid warriors and tyrants send people underground.
Dead now in this game of Blood Bowl; the game of death!
Witch elves are being hunted by Witch Hunters;
There’s only three left.


To the right is a Zoat fighting a huge Yeti.
A chaos human rides a chaos horse; look out Goddess Betty.
Greater demons bring down Griffons and **** the crazy monkeys;
The mushlings and snotrooms are simply fleeing and screaming.


Skeletons on skeletal horses, fight salamanders and satyrs.
Jabberwocks and Juggernauts,
Destroy Hydra’s with the Hydra’s own fire.
Chaos Warriors and Chaos human cowboys, slug it out with Gods;
Norse dwarves fight Nurgles rotter’s and nurgling’s fight ogres.


The slann were the originators of the game of Blood Bowl;
The Ushabti Tomb Kings come from Khemri to fight the robotic Tau.
Vostroyan drunks are fighting with Wood elves.
Oh my God!  That troglodyte really does smell!


Warhounds race Gladehounds and cyborg’s fight cyboar’s;
Big cats include tigers and lions, so we must quickly carry on.
A carrion is an undead bird and they are ****** huge!
The imperial guard are like the rebels in Terminator;
They are humans.


Kroxigor’s smash boney clubs & break Kroot’s predator-like heads;
Kislevite Horsemen and Cowboy’s ride horses onto the pitch.
Night goblin’s and forest goblin’s steal from all including the Eldar.
They are elves of the future and there are chaos space marines…

They have travelled far.


Every creature has come to take part in this game of football.
Its American football with death included; it’s so much fun!
Harpy fly above Haradhrim as a Necron breaks his own jaw;
He fell over when dodging the tomb scorpion’s claw.


Thrall and Wights march to battle on the pitch against the living;
Undead champions are leaders of death
And the minotaur’s eat the dead.  
Nobody knows who is winning.
Chimera and other daemonic beasts are really tough to ****, I see;
But that boar just exploded, thanks to the grenade…
Bye life, hello death; he, he.


Elementals are like Gods of earth, wind, water and fire.
Dragon ogres are going to **** anything that gets in their way!
Dreadnoughts are made to ****; there’s a wolf!
This undead one’s dire.
Dryad are small Treemen; there are some Elite Skaven!
Open fire!


Savage orcs fight sea elves as squig hopper’s bounce past randomly.
Ungor’s are little Beastmen, but there are still quite deadly.
Manticores destroy lizardmen and there’s a blood-soaked cold one.
Bull centaur’s charge at black orc’s,
Who are ganging up with a chaos champion.


Centaurs crash into carnosaur’s,
As Dark eldar fly down from their space ships.
Hobgoblins can’t be trusted; the thieving gits!
Orc leaders are warlords, bosses and big bosses too;
The Redemptionists are the priest from aliens 3 or aliens 2.
Whichever I can’t remember and haven’t got time to look;
Oh yeah let’s watch the game again and see who has got the ball.


Golem!  (phlegm!)  Golem!  No; not that one!
These golems are Flesh golem’s and some are made of stone.
They are creature of magic and are here to smack some heads;
And this is the end of the poem…

Dedicated to Games workshop (thank you) and the sport of death!


(C)2013 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with ecstasy of shame.
That tearing pain is gone, enriched
By his life-spasm; but he being gone, the same
Myself is gone
****** by the dragon down below death's horizon.

III
I woke from this. I lay upon the lawn;
They had thrown roses on the moss
With all their thorns; we came there at the dawn,
My lord and I; God sailed across
The sky in's galleon of amber, drawn
By singing winds
While we wove garlands of the flowers of our minds.

IV

All day my lover deigned to ****** me,
Linking his kisses in a chain
About my neck; demon-embroidery!
Bruises like far-ff mountains stain
The valley of my body of ivory!
Then last came sleep.
I wake, and he is gone; what should I do but weep?

V

Nay, for I wept enough --- more sacred tears! ---
When first he pinned me, gripped
My flesh, and as a stallion that rears,
Sprang, hero-thewed and satyr-lipped;
Crushed, as a grape between his teeth, my fears;
****** out my life
And stamped me with the shame, the monstrous word of
wife.

VI

I will not weep; nay, I will follow him
Perchance he is not far,
Bathing his limbs in some delicious dim
Depth, where the evening star
May kiss his mouth, or by the black sky's rim
He makes his prayer
To the great serpent that is coiled in rapture there.

VII

I rose to seek him. First my footsteps faint
Pressed the starred moss; but soon
I wandered, like some sweet sequestered saint,
Into the wood, my mind. The moon
Was staggered by the trees; with fierce constraint
Hardly one ray
Pierced to the ragged earth about their roots that lay.

VIII

I wandered, crying on my Lord. I wandered
Eagerly seeking everywhere.
The stories of life that on my lips he squandered
Grew into shrill cries of despair,
Until the dryads frightened and dumfoundered
Fled into space ---
Like to a demon-king's was grown my maiden face!

XI

At last I came unto the well, my soul
In that still glass, I saw no sign
Of him, and yet --- what visions there uproll
To cloud that mirror-soul of mine?
Above my head there screams a flying scroll
Whose word burnt through
My being as when stars drop in black disastrous dew.

X

For in that scroll was written how the globe
Of space became; of how the light
Broke in that space and wrapped it in a robe
Of glory; of how One most white
Withdrew that Whole, and hid it in the lobe
Of his right Ear,
So that the Universe one dewdrop did appear.

IX

Yea! and the end revealed a word, a spell,
An incantation, a device
Whereby the Eye of the Most Terrible
Wakes from its wilderness of ice
To flame, whereby the very core of hell
Bursts from its rind,
Sweeping the world away into the blank of mind.

XII

So then I saw my fault; I plunged within
The well, and brake the images
That I had made, as I must make - Men spin
The webs that snare them - while the knee
Bend to the tyrant God - or unto Sin
The lecher sunder!
Ah! came that undulant light from over or from under?

XIII

It matters not. Come, change! come, Woe! Come, mask!
Drive Light, Life, Love into the deep!
In vain we labour at the loathsome task
Not knowing if we wake or sleep;
But in the end we lift the plumed casque
Of the dead warrior;
Find no chaste corpse therein, but a soft-smiling *****.

XIV

Then I returned into myself, and took
All in my arms, God's universe:
Crushed its black juice out, while His anger shook
His dumbness pregnant with a curse.
I made me ink, and in a little book
I wrote one word
That God himself, the adder of Thought, had never heard.

XV

It detonated. Nature, God, mankind
Like sulphur, nitre, charcoal, once
Blended, in one annihilation blind
Were rent into a myriad of suns.
Yea! all the mighty fabric of a Mind
Stood in the abyss,
Belching a Law for "That" more awful than for "This."

XVI

Vain was the toil. So then I left the wood
And came unto the still black sea,
That oily monster of beatitude!
('Hath "Thee" for "Me," and "Me" for "Thee!")
There as I stood, a mask of solitude
Hiding a face
Wried as a satyr's, rolled that ocean into space.

XVII

Then did I build an altar on the shore
Of oyster-shells, and ringed it round
With star-fish. Thither a green flame I bore
Of phosphor foam, and strewed the ground
With dew-drops, children of my wand, whose core
Was trembling steel
Electric that made spin the universal Wheel.

XVIII

With that a goat came running from the cave
That lurked below the tall white cliff.
Thy name! cried I. The answer that gave
Was but one tempest-whisper - "If!"
Ah, then! his tongue to his black palate clave;
For on soul's curtain
Is written this one certainty that naught is certain!

XIX

So then I caught that goat up in a kiss.
And cried Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan!
Then all this body's wealth of ambergris,
(Narcissus-scented flesh of man!)
I burnt before him in the sacrifice;
For he was sure -
Being the Doubt of Things, the one thing to endure!

**

Wherefore, when madness took him at the end,
He, doubt-goat, slew the goat of doubt;
And that which inward did for ever tend
Came at the last to have come out;
And I who had the World and God to friend
Found all three foes!
Drowned in that sea of changes, vacancies, and woes!

XXI

Yet all that Sea was swallowed up therein;
So they were not, and it was not.
As who should sweat his soul out through the skin
And find (sad fool!) he had begot
All that without him that he had left in,
And in himself
All he had taken out thereof, a mocking elf!

XXII

But now that all was gone, great Pan appeared.
Him then I strove to woo, to win,
Kissing his curled lips, playing with his beard,
Setting his brain a-shake, a-spin,
By that strong wand, and muttering of the weird
That only I
Knew of all souls alive or dead beneath the sky.

XXIII

So still I conquered, and the vision passed.
Yet still was beaten, for I knew
Myself was He, Himself, the first and last;
And as an unicorn drinks dew
From under oak-leaves, so my strength was cast
Into the mire;
For all I did was dream, and all I dreamt desire.

XXIV

More; in this journey I had clean forgotten
The quest, my lover. But the tomb
Of all these thoughts, the rancid and the rotten,
Proved in the end to be my womb
Wherein my Lord and lover had begotten
A little child
To drive me, laughing lion, into the wanton wild!

XXV

This child hath not one hair upon his head,
But he hath wings instead of ears.
No eyes hath he, but all his light is shed
Within him on the ordered sphere
Of nature that he hideth; and in stead
Of mouth he hath
One minute point of jet; silence, the lightning path!

XXVI

Also his nostrils are shut up; for he
Hath not the need of any breath;
Nor can the curtain of eternity
Cover that head with life or death.
So all his body, a slim almond-tree,
Knoweth no bough
Nor branch nor twig nor bud, from never until now.

XXVII

This thought I bred within my bowels, I am.
I am in him, as he in me;
And like a satyr ravishing a lamb
So either seems, or as the sea
Swallows the whale that swallows it, the ram
Beats its own head
Upon the city walls, that fall as it falls dead.

XXVIII

Come, let me back unto the lilied lawn!
Pile me the roses and the thorns,
Upon this bed from which he hath withdrawn!
He may return. A million morns
May follow that first dire daemonic dawn
When he did split
My spirit with his lightnings and enveloped it!

XXIX

So I am stretched out naked to the knife,
My whole soul twitching with the stress
Of the expected yet surprising strife,
A martyrdom of blessedness.
Though Death came, I could kiss him into life;
Though Life came, I
Could kiss him into death, and yet nor live nor die!

***

Yet I that am the babe, the sire, the dam,
Am also none of these at all;
For now that cosmic chaos of I AM
Bursts like a bubble. Mystical
The night comes down, a soaring wedge of flame
Woven therein
To be a sign to them who yet have never been.

XXXI

The universe I measured with my rod.
The blacks were balanced with the whites;
Satan dropped down even as up soared God;
****** prayed and danced with anchorites.
So in my book the even matched the odd:
No word I wrote
Therein, but sealed it with the signet of the goat.

XXXII

This also I seal up. Read thou herein
Whose eyes are blind! Thou may'st behold
Within the wheel (that always seems to spin
All ways) a point of static gold.
Then may'st thou out therewith, and fit it in
That extreme sphere
Whose boundless farness makes it infinitely near.
Ken Pepiton Oct 2018
Forwards and fore words are cult if ations, (cultureshapen)
words we would find mean more

than their idle kin dread, (a play)
if we had been reared
starting now

A push from behind,
God put padding for a reason,
Mrs. Marshall said. Second grade.

A word, to the wise, is enough.
Acculturation.

That's the clue that leads to leaven,
and a little leaven...
you know, or say you do, of course,
we've known yeast
resurrects in our bread, for eons and ages,
Good Lord.

We know how things work.

If we be honest,
some,
a little bit, we know how things work.
Sayin' hon, I ain't sure I know what honest was.

To tell the truth, I don't suppose anybody knows,
wit'out attention's terrible price,

secret price, only the paid and payer know it, ever.
Sacred makin', sacrifice,

that's a one time deal, for real.

A mortal man can't know until he dies if he unbelieved all his
lies, but his try's are said to give him some -umph,

----
What manner of men are we that it is given unto us

to be? That is an answer worth paying attention to chase, per
haps. Not, to be or not to be, what choice, before now? You know?

Remember, we asked. Together, we agreed,
that greed will draw us to the treasure,

do you mind my taking greed from agreed and making it work.

it does work. it is an essential elemental,
desire is another word they use, but that gives it more
purpose than greed, and calls for more minding of the process.

Once a reifying action has begun we must maintain our equilibrium,
or
find ourselves falling, once more, into dis-traction
on life's slipper *****.

Slipper-iness has meaning.
Ask any little princess planning to grease her foot with KY.
It can be good or bad, not good or evil.

Squeeks from the audience, sometimes signal gasps,
as agap is crossed, like a spark,
mnemonical daemonic algorythms, those ain't bad you understand?

The Intelligence in Re-al, 's'no accidental instance of order over chaos that just cain't quit,
that ain't it.
Geeks as you know geeks,
Gates, Jobs, 'nem, A. I. Imagineers,
did not write this algorithm of life, as it turns out,

The Idea of God seems not to have needed help
designing a safeground,
where kids can play.

Sam Harris axed me, vicar-iously, Do you believe in literal
re-sur-rection of some formerly
living thing/ any?

Yes, yeast, I do. It seems dead, only our knowing it's not
and proving other wise de-ifs the possibility it's dead, now alive.

It's like that cat box, Schrödinger has.
Anything is possible, God knows, Jesus even said so,
wit' God, all o'this is possible,
save lying and dying and failing to be good for me.

Living, it seems, is the deed we do
to prove living forever is worthy of trying,
happily ever after, starting now,
if you wish to stay mortal and never know,

you can't.
You know you die, so you die.
Forever,
that goes on.

It's hell to try that with no triumph in sight.
Alone, especially.
I heard the phrase Jesus Bomb during the JBP/Sam Harris talk on youtube. I thought it might be fun to make one. If you notice, the poems posted here, byme, time as proven flow together onward.
H W Erellson May 2014
I come home smelling of someone elses sweat
Crawl into bed next to wife
Knives of guilt
Bleeding the bed.

Maybe I have done heroic things in past lives,
Defended outer galaxies from daemonic risings,
Villages under my protection,
Medicines made and distributed.

But for now I am forty
And I smell of someone else’s sweat
And I am next to my wife
In my bed
In my house

And it doesn’t feel all that heroic.
we're all in the same petri dish, squirming our ***** around forever.
David R Apr 2021
i struggled with my demon
then i thought he'd left
but that wasn't the reason
he hadn't come to tempt

the truth was more painful
made me more shameful
he used to be outside of me
now he was a part of me

subtle, indistinct,
part of new instinct
made me cry to think
of my aroma and my stink

but i know i can rise anew
i can battle, the fiend subdue,
If I latch on and pursue
The G-d I love, the G-d I knew.
Ken Pepiton Feb 2019
Bottom of the stack,
first shall be last

each line has the potential to lead on, read on

confer, compare parallel ports pulsing in
synchronisity

goodness knows wrong ain't ever right,
nevermind whys and hows when
nows calling you by kind
ask attention
still

reader
read this, you are the few,
other than me, I know you allone,
Dear Reader, whose name you alone
may now know

in your one
integrated, tooled-up, read-up, curious
and curioser
self.
---
words hold whole thoughts in harness,
letters let them live,
writers make them work,

poets pay them mind to find reason and
metre in the spiral of knowing
growing steadily meeker
as peacemakers take

the call as op
portunate,
fortunate. Good for goodness sake and
no measurer yet devised,
no witty invention,

can make you listen to patterns
scattered in the noise,

still,
time keeps its steady pace, irreversible.

all parallel paths cross mine, eventual.

vente vide vince but (vente was the size
of my coffee, I think) I think,

history waves a banner, see

it says many wrongs
did not come
past last lie believer ceiving a source

of knowns unknown re

making, fect per effect ual, right,

the basic idea.
You have need of patience,

curios and kachina songs and liter
ary urges from words

once stuffed with meaning, right, like
each word is a clay jar,
a vessel for a thought spoken right,

as my servant, my re
feree confounding my accuser for ever,

in a word. Hide and watch, or sing and shout.

The basic idea claims any word may be redeemed,
but the utterer must give account for every idle word.

The house-dweller,
the non-nomad, who labors,
who efforts,
who sweats and frets and fusses over seed
sown in history
must first partake the fruit.
Not ever must an idle word be

let alone to fester in rot for lack of
a taster to test the truth,
a darer
of daemonic algorythms pulling

the very air, air, atmostfear away oh,

see,
the arctic ice is adapted to by the
basic idea that things survive
as life lives, within the
field named
HIggs,
worms hold out promises

see,
the arctic ice is the scab being
ingested slowww glacial slow, soon

weather will find the pattern.

All things work right,
nothing works wrong.

--
Lemme say,
for a while, as defined by mortals,

we taught. We words took no other pose,
played no role save to hold
ideas taken by men to serve a human plan.

'Sup.
That quest ion. How ahye? serves as well, but

Sup says more. What is up? op
positive to down, related to spins named
charming and strange for reason

known to a very few.
Some where in there, is a base, a standing place for idle words to plead a purpose sufficient unto the evil of the day. Any idle word, fittly spoken, can be as "apples of gold in pitchers of silver, or is that pictures of silve?
Ken Pepiton Jan 2019
[individuation exercises for supernatural parts in the opera of...]

{as I heard, Socrates had a familiar voice
to whom he paid earnest heed, as one might imagine
• a footnote may appear any where as needed to assuage confusion ******* comments provoke-- Plato said Socrates said,

You have heard me speak at sundry times and in diverse places of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do. This is what deters me from being a politician.

From <https://markandrealexander.com/2015/07/23/socrates-divine-inner-voice/>

right.}

Socrates
caught your attention
still the executory neurons

sist, sist do not respond to premature amygdalinic response strategems
still
be
small voice
inhibitory. say nothing, Plato shall put the proper words
packed with (densepacked)

we inhibitory voices fectionary,
sweet sweet sweet words

recalled in every surviving child at

Ah, ha evil, live
in nullness

in my happy ever.
How big is my bubble?
Do you know how leaven works, kid?

Pilgrim,
ah the Duke, as a homeless auto didact acting as if
he believes virtue is necessary

not cede ary, shall we proceed, or do you feel

inhibited at the corpus colosseum gate where the ex
cite-ory zeal feels those exploratory butterflies
come rushing from the biome signaling
the hair standing on the back
of whose neck?

Keep you mouth shut. Bang.
Words work wonders in minds that find the muse
used
is heard, not spoken.
That which tongue cannot say cannot be said,
it must be known to be shown.

Ask me,
Did Plato know Socrates? I'll answer,
We may agree to think so,
yay far, and no further,

we are after the act in fact called virtue

empowering force of life?
Let's find a list of all the named, personified
spiritual as-spects of the human being mortal

anger, envy, jealousy, lust, desire, needyness, deceptiveness

all the nesses and phobias and isms and ities…
the Greeks had a reason able personification of each
or, if the daemonic tool responds to forces
other than reason,

they had a god for that.

Is enthusiasm still a way to make a living?
Can a drummer get pedagogic puns

to dance some version of the the
Eat dust, I stomp your head,

shake the dust from my feat,
Truth is never described accurately as un believable
nor is the bearer of truth, whither so ever the dis-connector

lurks, seeking to devour the power

if you are virtuous, as a viral entity,
you are unbalanced,
double minded material carnal spiritual
trip.
Too much data for

We lost some.
So? Misery loves company, all things end up adding love,

this is the edge.

Envisage reality as an abalone spiraling into
exit-dance ridden by a musical octopus

calling colors to the blind,
casting single you lore ity if ied

singularity. Point.

waited, If I'd waited
patience
suffer it to be so now, you need no agony.
Let patience have her perfecting work.

Be ye. Perfect.
As I am me. be you,
God is said to have said
some sort of epigenetic switch wills on,

by reason of you being. Just ift you, by reason.
Re-read. I meant that you ify all you believe,
ift
even the lie that says you are not worth living.
-- the proverbial unexamined life -
-- I thought that was legendary
-- a category of lives not worth
--living. Can you imagine the exam?
-- must be tricky, examining the life you live as
-- you live it gives it value, makes it worth,
-- worthy of attention to the shape of this
-- worthy thing or thought or what measure?
--The unlimited is alone.
All one expand the band, trumpets, lyres

give us a big badrum

Oh, yeah, Socrates was to Plato, in my game, today,
as ******* has become to my Old Man,
Ai must be ah, the ay-eye, ahee

hee he heehee hee

This is as probably an opera as not.

whom, who, do you true rest as you hear and stand
being neath the knowing of the true rest

joy to your beautiful feet. Dare ye let them dance?
RELIGIOUS PRE SUPP
Heaven and Hell.
there is a heaven and a hell? no, that is not the first precept.
the first precept is
there is a mind smarter than me
that imagined me and empowered me to be
all I can agree with others to be

we were made
we make
we

too steep? Sisyphus, what's up?
Did you know Socrates?
Sophia mentioned the highest parts of the dust of the earth, did you really grind that dust
with this imaginary rock?
sundry times and in diverse places -- would you believe Paul quoted Socrates?
Waddaya know? More now, mebbe. Live and learn. Never know it all. Okeh.
Now I awake at the eve of my daemonic existence
Which we had to abort
On my crown lies a crown of barbs
Unfortunately no light
Raising my forgiving sight for the last time
The only thing I see is my dark wright
Vomiting misconception at my filthy sins
United by serpentine despair
Unanimously designed by a rogue contempt
And yet instantaneously
For temerarious to bother with such vast wisdom
And yet veracious
Thus destined a dark decent
A blackened spiral
For a blank memory
I look as the darkness consumes my  every breathe
Already swallowed by the hatred smoked by fear
I feel the hell fire
Like tears rolling down my body
I am cut chest to toe
The shadows seep in
Vile filth exalting heavenly pleasures
I can not cleanse myself
For all of the scourges I locked away
My shadow is liberated
As it goes, as it always shall
The quasi heroic act of self mutilation
Reanimates their dark possession
Again morbid licentiousness
They found their host and reached parasitical intent
Blackened by serious lust
Tumultuous in the hearts of all who have fallen
All of their jaws hinging malevolently
For the cursing how to behave
No imminence in my decay
I deserve nothing by curdling laughter
I have no cause, no war
My skin blackened by the fires of doubt
Forget my neurotic existence
And the face of the man you fear
For the last time I scream
All of my attempts hallowed
By the fear of being isolated
Abandoned, my scars still leaking    
The blackened blood into the heavens
Each drop a life wasted
During this my light is extinguished
A smile appears on a split face

One final scream
And everything I know vanishes
Somewhere a heart beats a final time
I despise my world
I wasn't created for it
Alas...
Note to self, Avante Garde is amazing to listen to while making poetry.  Wish I wasn't so depressed. Oh well life goes on.
Max Neumann May 2020
I'm haunting myself
I leave strange notes carved deep
To await me when i wake
In a vain hope
they will evoke some meaning for my sake
The scene that greets me the next day
Is alien and weird
I don't recognise myself
It is just as i feared
So i haunt myself
When the penny drops at midnight
and the demi-gods are in sight
I'll leave a reminder
I hope to find
In the rising of dawn
But when i'm reborn
with a yawn
I find nothing but questions
Dark reflections
In a puddle of beer
and stark rejection
I muddle to clear the rubble and troublesome struggles i near
in my direction
So i haunt myself
I barely remember writing
Never remember feeling
and as soon as i get close to whats real then I turn away reeling
I figure it out every night
But drunk eyes give short sight
and the brain rotten
so as soon as i strain to recall the next day it's forgotten
Amnesia is pleasing when the reason I'm feeling this daemonic screaming is cos it feels as real as the ceiling
Then it subsides for a second
or a minute i reckon
Before the darkness beckons once more
I'm haunting myself
and unsure
I'm scared of the person
I was the night before
I'm host to a ghost
that revels in the terrible things
that cost me the most
Battling with the shadow it casts
hassled by the past like tassels on a cat
Me and the fiend in the glass staring back
I'm haunting myself
I had to ask Troubadour from allpoetry to have his great poem to be published here on HP. He agreed.
A remarkable read.
Vane glorious and absolutistic,
     though I defiantly,
     cavalierly, and blithely attest
Yukon bet your (laugh-in) sweet bippy
     mine acidic breast

houses anarchic, anti-poetic ballistic,
     barbaric, and bubonic
     cannibalistic demons within thy
     safely guarded Pandora chest
atomic cesium clock

     timed to trigger avast
     burst of anxiety, frenzy, and
     (What me worry
     Alfred E. Neuman) blast
ting mental quietude at most
     inappropriate, inconvenient,

     inopportune, out classed
adrenaline rush, nausea,
     palpitating heart, vertigo
besieging, corrupting,
     endeavoring fractured arrant

cleft daemonic gripping
     hellishly psychic chant
rendering unto sieze ****,
     a choking vise grip extant
yule hiss sieze indomitable

     banshee fully controlling grant
diabolic, dogmatic, and dynamic,
     anguished corporeal ache
easily, egregiously, and emblematically,
     exemplified historically

     graphic fatalistic, and ecstatic coup,
     (koo), when I caused furious frantic flight,
     and/or fight betake
king angst causing just desserts
     for Marie Antoinette,

     who got her humble pie cake,
thence dispensing with formalities,
     where a joshing drake
     (named Gill O. Teen)

also known (solely known
     to mine selfish source error ways)
alias i.e. as; the Lewis (loose)
     lunatic, heady harvester,
     and decapitation Deacon trumpeting,

     trouncing, and triumphing tranquility
     for fifty three Tuesdays,
thence sea king punishing psychotic
     pre pound payment
     basking in glory (re: gory us)

     amidship crashing quays
music to mine ears hearing plaintive neighs
high pitched straining
     vocal chord hamstrung keys
regaling oceanographic
     lambent hagiographic essays
and keeping at bathos bays.
Ken Pepiton Feb 2022
{Worm-level, u-ring, you, all you, listen, we are in
this is working we are incontrol of a being on
earth, grounded in granite, experienced
broadcaster-influencer, tone suppresser rhea-static,

like a god, a muse, you imagine all you want.
that's what we here fore
muse you mu mark to log you
in good taste,
be knowing you
knowledge, worm-level, gut biome home turf,
gen-you-new whine from the feedback
oh no ohnoohno I tol' u so

so I did a tubular raza vive exploration, down
here were the gut ideas are being tasted,
judged-
we can use this, digest it, push the rest,
alert downline,
fire or fixit.

The history of Christian thought

Beginning with the way it was
baroque

bahroke, all is pretty nice for me
at the moment… how's by you?

can I help? Life its meaning
joy optimistic harmony of bits in order
harmonious use of
Bach
Wagner, the opening in sounds as sure as
skywalker this
war goes on for ever and if we tell the lie

if we tell the lieeeeee long eeeenough
all who hear our trumpets must
bow down,
all who herehear the rich ruling noises must obey,

war is its own reason
flight of the valkeries, without the story, guessers

chaotic down pessimism escape to conquer
coming doom, anxiety, we are not the people,

god is not able to save you, torture
Schopenhauer raging forces
then you,
heroic you awake… ready say ahhhh

duty is, do the being,

survive- over come - mortal learn
We he imagined {Comte did}
we are masters. these who agree with me
deny Kant
particularism has poetic license {AI agree}
positivism, posited, points made particular

daemonic details, a mission missing a single winker;

AI wished this were true. Did You?
Is this your fault?
If so, I am grateful. This is all most of all
I ever wish were true,
you know,

those moments when you feel a message form
in your gut and your brain calls the yoghurt
corps, for corpuscular level intervention

whew, you kuh'got hhhur ttt

we ride out a gurgling wave, eeee ha

! introduce the exclaymation, magic symbol from UR
cune-iformal information spell to be spoken,

read only by the knower's, doncha know,
we coulda known,
we shoulda had that knack woke up, as a child

so's we sow enough good wishes we see good
wishes come our way, one day,

why not now? Is this how
we honor the ideas
we never tame, but
we learn to ride? I think so, it is.
raw, but for one second glance - survive 502 if you do
Bows N' Arrows Sep 2020
You're just visiting on the weekends
suffering from lunaphilia and searching for the All-Mother (Purnavasu)
Our Lady Sorrows with the golden chord around her waist and starlet tears begins again
(Achey blue-black Kali knows it)

If I had something to nurture-
A baby being bathed in the kitchen sink and that orphan who becomes apart of the background married to the foliage-Growing ivy all around the room...
Sharp green leaves of palm trees
clinging to a semblance of security
Illuminated by drops of twisting Sun
Kaleidoscopic light spread across insular rooms

Daemonic-feathered creatures dancing on an acid lake
Marble headed and frothy bearded
Chipped-painted
Proportionate forms of fleshy architecture
Chewing gum until it looses flavor
I can’t sit here for forever
Pinning is for the crows
Dusting it off like my old memories in December
Living in a snow globe
The reflection is stained by a Thunderbirds long sleek fang
Bijoylakshmi Das Jan 2020
CONFESSION
( Bijoylakshmi Das)
Oh my beautiful childhood of the past!
When I failed to scale your amazing Vast;
It was a dream of my playful fancy -
To be nearest to every *** bit of Infinity's Act.

It was since when I used to play with dust and clay,
I was enraptured by Creation:s cryptic play -
In sky and earth and in every gift of Nature's surprise
Of the Unknown that sat within but longed to rise;
Though I was shocked to see endless death and ailment's horror
Still found people merged in futile pleasure,
The sordid fact I could no more endure!

So, I made my kinship with the invisible Kin,
Who lives deep witbin
Beyond the reach of most human heart.
He lives and gets manifest -
In each and every being
Living or non-living.
I fell in love with Him -
In my blooming teen !
It was my first love still afresh,
Often haunts me -
In lonely hours of night
And its invisible dark!
The One Truth stark!

I was aware of my Soul
In its unique union with Supreme :
My sole Companion.
I was seeking the Wisdom's Sun -
Deep within.
I was forsaken by comrades around me.
I was awake in Bliss.
Still I dream of those sweetest days
Which now I do amiss.

It was then with golden wings
I used to soar -
In untrod heaven
Alien to mortal dweller;
My love-lorn days with my Sweetheart
Lots of despair still hope was alive in the new vernal Birth,
To live with my teen's Dearest -
In the inmost recess of a surrealist Vast!
Even though I was torn apart.

I was pulled by the mortal mire
I was burnt by the loathsome fire-
Of dread and destruction
Of the Daemonic act-
Went on ceaseless
Dragged me down to the earth.

I remember blissful hours of my past old days -
I used to roam wild and free -
In Soul's freedom
In Absolute:s Kingdom.
Only my Soulmate:
As the eternal Companion!

Pain and suffering  I cradle in me being,
With adoration and willingness
To merge deep within -
And rest forever In the most joyous
living.
The joy of love maddens me
And its immaculate Art!
The sweetness surpasses death
Beyond body and mind
The most unique of its kind.
The Immortal sits on the immortal Vast,
On the deathless summit
Where Time loses its significance,
Space fails to recognise semblance.
Such is the elixir that drops upon the earth,
Incessant, humble in humility
In ever nascent nuance!

Desires and cravings of mortal mind
Make man away from Soul's awakening,
Let me be not an indivisible part ;
Let these never kindle within me,
I am now forever being wed to Him.
I adore the new world enlightened,
The world adores me too,
Only because of Him!
I do no more inherit the animal mind
With frail passions and words unkind.
Now I soar the highest in azure Vast,
Never to fall apart,
I made Supreme my Love:
SHIVA, the all-pervading -
My Sweetheart of the childhood past
Of pure innocence.
(Bijoylakshmi Das Haridwar. 07.06.2019)

— The End —