What is Love?
Is it a folly,
Is it mirth, or melancholy?
    Joys above,
Are there many, or not any?
    What is Love?

    If you please,
A most sweet folly!
Full of mirth and melancholy:
    Both of these!
In its sadness worth all gladness,
    If you please!

    Prithee where,
Goes Love a-hiding?
Is he long in his abiding
    Anywhere?
Can you bind him when you find him;
    Prithee, where?

    With spring days
Love comes and dallies:
Upon the mountains, through the valleys
    Lie Love's ways.
Then he leaves you and deceives you
    In spring days.

Warm sunset welcomes
Flirtatious night, she dallies
On the edge, darkly.

A beastly wind with savage heat
Blew from the north with dust,
The brazen sun relentlessly
Baked skin as red as rust.
To scan the near horizon
Is to ***** the eyes to squint
And a man would **** his brother
For a cold beer from a ****.

There’s orders for the gunners
To load cannon with coarse shot,
To prime them with dry powder
And ram them all till hot.
To keep the eyes upon the hills
And be ready for the call,
Because the savages are massing
And our backs are to the wall.

Release the carrier pigeon, boy,
To recall the horse hussars
Because before this day is done
Our blood may run in jars
For the drums of war are beating
And they’re sweeping from the hills
And God help the luckless fusilier
Who dallies with his skills.

In waves, the savages do run
And roar their chant of war,
Beat their spears upon hide shield
And roll their eyes and more...
A wall of pure malevolence
Descends upon us large
And we gird ourselves for battle
And the bugle screams the charge.

Black naked men pour from the earth
In hoards of shrieking mad
With rolling eyes and streaming hair
And rancid breath, so bad.
Roaring shot and cannon volley
Cut a swathe through flesh,
Spear and shrapnel fly opposed
And axe and bayonet mesh.

Swearing men are head to head
Blood and guts do flow,
The agony and roaring triumph
As blades trade blow for blow.
Good and bad are dying now
Their bodies fall like rain,
Young cry for their mothers
While the older scream in pain.

Blood is running in the sand,
Twitching bodies lie,
The jagged sound of battle dims
As vultures fill the sky.
There’s silence with the setting sun
As  horse hussar arrives
Too late, by far, to save the boys
Who lay in clouds of flies.


Marshalg
@The Bach
Mangere Bridge
18 January 2011

as darkness cradles
its palpability encompasses
dreams

a moments sway...

inebriates as images of him
passes through salient memories
of Him and I

those moments spun like silk...

his visage visible; an augury to me
dreams allusion dallies like
gossamer in gentle breezes
teasing, taunting in its promise
of fulfillment

dreams alight...

his ambling soft, blush arises as
I bow into maleness, where
urgency slides, tasting silken
curvatures; that stare into hazel
eyes beckon lips

memories caress...

rise and fall of gasped breaths
unleashed wilder dreams
beneath thirst of his eyes,
swallowed by seduction

those naked memories...

flush, deep within our hunger;
a rush fed into sweet pulses,
bodies rise; cognizance slips
back, wetness effusive

drenched...

entwined, legs, hips fingertip
forages; his breath mine mingle
and whispered moans

abandoned...

those dreams linger still
in darkness of midnight
calling his name in want

a remembered taste...

We are chaperones to the pillars of heaven
Emissaries to the call of the horn
Jumping and seeing into the forest of pollen
Wrestling from the beckoning of civilisation.

Acres of my landscapes and minds to ourselves
I love the many ways you twirl me underneath your spell
Changeling of time and the humming silence of the bee
Pull me aside and whisper me minutes to the sea.

Bases of absence, dallies of the world
***** and dust are nothing to my soil
Enchantment of light, my reveries and hate
Holding me tight and singing bonds in the wake.

Gashes of essence, a milky-white of pure flow
Gushing like ravens, shrieking empty to the core
Yearning for the distance and dying in its twilight
Breathing in your essence keeps the pulse of me alive.

Elizabeth Warr was the woman next door,
They called her a witch and a hag,
We lived in a lane that was called ‘Little Payne’
Though what there was lived in her bag,
She carried a hammer, a sharp bladed knife
A corkscrew and two leather twists,
The corkscrew she carried for putting out eyes,
The leather for binding of wrists.

She’d been more than sane up until the back lane
Had revealed that her daughter was courting,
Who’d never told anyone who she had met
Till they found her the following morning,
But she had been ravaged, her body was savaged
Her skirt was pulled over her head,
And blood ran in rivulets down to her ankles
Elizabeth’s daughter was dead.

And that’s when she swore that revenge would be hers
As she haunted the back lanes and alleys,
Carting the murderous tools in her bag
And noting who dillies and dallies,
‘He’ll try it again, and I will be there,’
She announced to her friends and her neighbours,
‘They always return to the scene of the crime
And the place of their murderous labours.’

The months had gone by with barely a sign
He’d ever come back to the midden,
With no-one attacked, he hadn't looked back
So guessing the culprit, forbidden.
But then on a line in the communal yard
A scarf fluttered high on the line,
Elizabeth saw it and reached out and caught it
And muttered, ‘I know that, it’s mine!’

Her daughter had borrowed that scarf for one night
The night that she’d thought to go courting,
And then in the horror, the fear and the fright
The scarf wasn’t there in the morning.
Elizabeth watched who collected the scarf
The mother of Alan John Sidden,
Then carried her bag to the rear of the park
While she waited for dark, to be hidden.

They say there were screams and loud howls in the dark
On that night in the early September,
And smoke in the trees that would waft in the breeze
Along with some foul smelling embers,
When Sidden was found, what was left, on the ground
In the morning, his throat cut, it’s true,
They said that his eyes were a gruesome surprise
They’d been taken by some sort of *****.

David Lewis Paget

As tough as ice she might appears, but still carries a melting heart of snow,
the softer side of this warrior Princess is still left for the world to know;

She carries an attitude that may pierce the heart of many suitors,
& for those who are judgmental her words come as battle *******;

Few Casanovas might have survived the attacks of her coquetry and grace,
  for others are still lying unconscious deeply wounded in Hurt’s Embrace;

Although it seems she has evolved as a sagacious damsel, all set for a ****,
still her humility, servitude and feminine art is hidden under a veil;

Her care for the family n kins is exemplary filled with concerns,
& her stand for protecting them is like sunlight shining on golden ferns;

At times she recollects the sweet memories that r close to her heart,
as maturity replaced d sugar-pie of her innocence with a lemon ****;

Although she dresses and dallies like a grown up duchess of shire,
deep inside she’s a still kid longing for a rostrum in this world’s mire;

Her prayers to the lordships are never tinged with selfish material needs,
instead, she beseech only forgiveness & strength for enduring righteous deeds;

We wish her all happiness and warmth she deserves in her life,
may the lord showers her with his choicest blessings that too rife;

Silent, grey,
Memories call,
Bodies decay,
Spirits enthral.

Forest of stones,
Soldiers *****,
Markers of bones
Command respect.

Here, a soul,
In shadow, hides,
Tries to console
Young widow-bride.

There, a spirit,
of little merit,
dallies in grit,
whit to inherit.

Sobbing, a child
Kneels by her father,
Lips that once smiled
Buried before her.

Love-blind groom
Aches for his partner
Asleep in her tomb,
Asleep to his ardour.

Sighing tears,
Wind and rain,
Love and fear
Entwine the twain.

And gravel and grass
Watch from afar
as death and life dance
with bid, 'au revoir'.