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I.
Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!
Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye!
They could not in the self-same mansion dwell
Without some stir of heart, some malady;
They could not sit at meals but feel how well
It soothed each to be the other by;
They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep
But to each other dream, and nightly weep.

II.
With every morn their love grew tenderer,
With every eve deeper and tenderer still;
He might not in house, field, or garden stir,
But her full shape would all his seeing fill;
And his continual voice was pleasanter
To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;
Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,
She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.

III.
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,
Before the door had given her to his eyes;
And from her chamber-window he would catch
Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;
And constant as her vespers would he watch,
Because her face was turn'd to the same skies;
And with sick longing all the night outwear,
To hear her morning-step upon the stair.

IV.
A whole long month of May in this sad plight
Made their cheeks paler by the break of June:
"To morrow will I bow to my delight,
"To-morrow will I ask my lady's boon."--
"O may I never see another night,
"Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love's tune."--
So spake they to their pillows; but, alas,
Honeyless days and days did he let pass;

V.
Until sweet Isabella's untouch'd cheek
Fell sick within the rose's just domain,
Fell thin as a young mother's, who doth seek
By every lull to cool her infant's pain:
"How ill she is," said he, "I may not speak,
"And yet I will, and tell my love all plain:
"If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,
"And at the least 'twill startle off her cares."

VI.
So said he one fair morning, and all day
His heart beat awfully against his side;
And to his heart he inwardly did pray
For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide
Stifled his voice, and puls'd resolve away--
Fever'd his high conceit of such a bride,
Yet brought him to the meekness of a child:
Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!

VII.
So once more he had wak'd and anguished
A dreary night of love and misery,
If Isabel's quick eye had not been wed
To every symbol on his forehead high;
She saw it waxing very pale and dead,
And straight all flush'd; so, lisped tenderly,
"Lorenzo!"--here she ceas'd her timid quest,
But in her tone and look he read the rest.

VIII.
"O Isabella, I can half perceive
"That I may speak my grief into thine ear;
"If thou didst ever any thing believe,
"Believe how I love thee, believe how near
"My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve
"Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear
"Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live
"Another night, and not my passion shrive.

IX.
"Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,
"Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,
"And I must taste the blossoms that unfold
"In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time."
So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,
And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:
Great bliss was with them, and great happiness
Grew, like a ***** flower in June's caress.

X.
Parting they seem'd to tread upon the air,
Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart
Only to meet again more close, and share
The inward fragrance of each other's heart.
She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair
Sang, of delicious love and honey'd dart;
He with light steps went up a western hill,
And bade the sun farewell, and joy'd his fill.

XI.
All close they met again, before the dusk
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,
All close they met, all eves, before the dusk
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,
Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,
Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.
Ah! better had it been for ever so,
Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.

XII.
Were they unhappy then?--It cannot be--
Too many tears for lovers have been shed,
Too many sighs give we to them in fee,
Too much of pity after they are dead,
Too many doleful stories do we see,
Whose matter in bright gold were best be read;
Except in such a page where Theseus' spouse
Over the pathless waves towards him bows.

XIII.
But, for the general award of love,
The little sweet doth **** much bitterness;
Though Dido silent is in under-grove,
And Isabella's was a great distress,
Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove
Was not embalm'd, this truth is not the less--
Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,
Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

XIV.
With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,
Enriched from ancestral merchandize,
And for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torched mines and noisy factories,
And many once proud-quiver'd ***** did melt
In blood from stinging whip;--with hollow eyes
Many all day in dazzling river stood,
To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

XV.
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:
Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

XVI.
Why were they proud? Because their marble founts
Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears?--
Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts
Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?--
Why were they proud? Because red-lin'd accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?--
Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,
Why in the name of Glory were they proud?

XVII.
Yet were these Florentines as self-retired
In hungry pride and gainful cowardice,
As two close Hebrews in that land inspired,
Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies,
The hawks of ship-mast forests--the untired
And pannier'd mules for ducats and old lies--
Quick cat's-paws on the generous stray-away,--
Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.

XVIII.
How was it these same ledger-men could spy
Fair Isabella in her downy nest?
How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye
A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt's pest
Into their vision covetous and sly!
How could these money-bags see east and west?--
Yet so they did--and every dealer fair
Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.

XIX.
O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!
Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon,
And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,
And of thy roses amorous of the moon,
And of thy lilies, that do paler grow
Now they can no more hear thy ghittern's tune,
For venturing syllables that ill beseem
The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.

**.
Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale
Shall move on soberly, as it is meet;
There is no other crime, no mad assail
To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet:
But it is done--succeed the verse or fail--
To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet;
To stead thee as a verse in English tongue,
An echo of thee in the north-wind sung.

XXI.
These brethren having found by many signs
What love Lorenzo for their sister had,
And how she lov'd him too, each unconfines
His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad
That he, the servant of their trade designs,
Should in their sister's love be blithe and glad,
When 'twas their plan to coax her by degrees
To some high noble and his olive-trees.

XXII.
And many a jealous conference had they,
And many times they bit their lips alone,
Before they fix'd upon a surest way
To make the youngster for his crime atone;
And at the last, these men of cruel clay
Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone;
For they resolved in some forest dim
To **** Lorenzo, and there bury him.

XXIII.
So on a pleasant morning, as he leant
Into the sun-rise, o'er the balustrade
Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent
Their footing through the dews; and to him said,
"You seem there in the quiet of content,
"Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade
"Calm speculation; but if you are wise,
"Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.

XXIV.
"To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount
"To spur three leagues towards the Apennine;
"Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count
"His dewy rosary on the eglantine."
Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont,
Bow'd a fair greeting to these serpents' whine;
And went in haste, to get in readiness,
With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman's dress.

XXV.
And as he to the court-yard pass'd along,
Each third step did he pause, and listen'd oft
If he could hear his lady's matin-song,
Or the light whisper of her footstep soft;
And as he thus over his passion hung,
He heard a laugh full musical aloft;
When, looking up, he saw her features bright
Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight.

XXVI.
"Love, Isabel!" said he, "I was in pain
"Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow:
"Ah! what if I should lose thee, when so fain
"I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow
"Of a poor three hours' absence? but we'll gain
"Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow.
"Good bye! I'll soon be back."--"Good bye!" said she:--
And as he went she chanted merrily.

XXVII.
So the two brothers and their ******'d man
Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream
Gurgles through straiten'd banks, and still doth fan
Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream
Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan
The brothers' faces in the ford did seem,
Lorenzo's flush with love.--They pass'd the water
Into a forest quiet for the slaughter.

XXVIII.
There was Lorenzo slain and buried in,
There in that forest did his great love cease;
Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win,
It aches in loneliness--is ill at peace
As the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin:
They dipp'd their swords in the water, and did tease
Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur,
Each richer by his being a murderer.

XXIX.
They told their sister how, with sudden speed,
Lorenzo had ta'en ship for foreign lands,
Because of some great urgency and need
In their affairs, requiring trusty hands.
Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow's ****,
And 'scape at once from Hope's accursed bands;
To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow,
And the next day will be a day of sorrow.

***.
She weeps alone for pleasures not to be;
Sorely she wept until the night came on,
And then, instead of love, O misery!
She brooded o'er the luxury alone:
His image in the dusk she seem'd to see,
And to the silence made a gentle moan,
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,
And on her couch low murmuring, "Where? O where?"

XXXI.
But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long
Its fiery vigil in her single breast;
She fretted for the golden hour, and hung
Upon the time with feverish unrest--
Not long--for soon into her heart a throng
Of higher occupants, a richer zest,
Came tragic; passion not to be subdued,
And sorrow for her love in travels rude.

XXXII.
In the mid days of autumn, on their eves
The breath of Winter comes from far away,
And the sick west continually bereaves
Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay
Of death among the bushes and the leaves,
To make all bare before he dares to stray
From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel
By gradual decay from beauty fell,

XXXIII.
Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes
She ask'd her brothers, with an eye all pale,
Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes
Could keep him off so long? They spake a tale
Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes
Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom's vale;
And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud,
To see their sister in her snowy shroud.

XXXIV.
And she had died in drowsy ignorance,
But for a thing more deadly dark than all;
It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,
Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall
For some few gasping moments; like a lance,
Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall
With cruel pierce, and bringing him again
Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

XXXV.
It was a vision.--In the drowsy gloom,
The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot
Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb
Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could shoot
Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom
Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute
From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears
Had made a miry channel for his tears.

XXXVI.
Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake;
For there was striving, in its piteous tongue,
To speak as when on earth it was awake,
And Isabella on its music hung:
Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,
As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung;
And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song,
Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.

XXXVII.
Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright
With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof
From the poor girl by magic of their light,
The while it did unthread the horrid woof
Of the late darken'd time,--the murderous spite
Of pride and avarice,--the dark pine roof
In the forest,--and the sodden turfed dell,
Where, without any word, from stabs he fell.

XXXVIII.
Saying moreover, "Isabel, my sweet!
"Red whortle-berries droop above my head,
"And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;
"Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed
"Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat
"Comes from beyond the river to my bed:
"Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
"And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

XXXIX.
"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
"Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling
"Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,
"While little sounds of life are round me knelling,
"And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
"And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,
"Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,
"And thou art distant in Humanity.

XL.
"I know what was, I feel full well what is,
"And I should rage, if spirits could go mad;
"Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,
"That paleness warms my grave, as though I had
"A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss
"To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad;
"Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel
"A greater love through all my essence steal."

XLI.
The Spirit mourn'd "Adieu!"--dissolv'd, and left
The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;
As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,
Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,
We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,
And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:
It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache,
And in the dawn she started up awake;

XLII.
"Ha! ha!" said she, "I knew not this hard life,
"I thought the worst was simple misery;
"I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife
"Portion'd us--happy days, or else to die;
"But there is crime--a brother's ****** knife!
"Sweet Spirit, thou hast school'd my infancy:
"I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,
"And greet thee morn and even in the skies."

XLIII.
When the full morning came, she had devised
How she might secret to the forest hie;
How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,
And sing to it one latest lullaby;
How her short absence might be unsurmised,
While she the inmost of the dream would try.
Resolv'd, she took with her an aged nurse,
And went into that dismal forest-hearse.

XLIV.
See, as they creep along the river side,
How she doth whisper to that aged Dame,
And, after looking round the champaign wide,
Shows her a knife.--"What feverous hectic flame
"Burns in thee, child?--What good can thee betide,
"That thou should'st smile again?"--The evening came,
And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed;
The flint was there, the berries at his head.

XLV.
Who hath not loiter'd in a green church-yard,
And let his spirit, like a demon-mole,
Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,
To see skull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole;
Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd,
And filling it once more with human soul?
Ah! this is holiday to what was felt
When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt.

XLVI.
She gaz'd into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
One glance did fully all its secrets tell;
Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know
Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;
Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow,
Like to a native lily of the dell:
Then with her knife, all sudden, she began
To dig more fervently than misers can.

XLVII.
Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon
Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies,
She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone,
And put it in her *****, where it dries
And freezes utterly unto the bone
Those dainties made to still an infant's cries:
Then 'gan she work again; nor stay'd her care,
But to throw back at times her vei
About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
--this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free, it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic
handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.

It must be Nova Scotia; only there
does one see abled wooden houses
painted that awful shade of brown.
The other houses, the bits that show, are white.
Elm trees, low hills, a thin church steeple
--that gray-blue wisp--or is it? In the foreground
a water meadow with some tiny cows,
two brushstrokes each, but confidently cows;
two minuscule white geese in the blue water,
back-to-back, feeding, and a slanting stick.
Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,
fresh-squiggled from the tube.
The air is fresh and cold; cold early spring
clear as gray glass; a half inch of blue sky
below the steel-gray storm clouds.
(They were the artist's specialty.)
A specklike bird is flying to the left.
Or is it a flyspeck looking like a bird?

Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!
It's behind--I can almost remember the farmer's name.
His barn backed on that meadow. There it is,
titanium white, one dab. The hint of steeple,
filaments of brush-hairs, barely there,
must be the Presbyterian church.
Would that be Miss Gillespie's house?
Those particular geese and cows
are naturally before my time.

A sketch done in an hour, "in one breath,"
once taken from a trunk and handed over.
Would you like this? I'll Probably never
have room to hang these things again.
Your Uncle George, no, mine, my Uncle George,
he'd be your great-uncle, left them all with Mother
when he went back to England.
You know, he was quite famous, an R.A....

I never knew him. We both knew this place,
apparently, this literal small backwater,
looked at it long enough to memorize it,
our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,
or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).
Our visions coincided--"visions" is
too serious a word--our looks, two looks:
art "copying from life" and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?
Life and the memory of it cramped,
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail
--the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.
Lady of dusk-wood fastnesses,
Thou art my Lady.
I have known the crisp, splintering leaf-tread with thee on before,
White, slender through green saplings;
I have lain by thee on the brown forest floor
Beside thee, my Lady.
Lady of rivers strewn with stones,
Only thou art my Lady.
Where thousand the freshets are crowded like peasants to a fair;
Clear-skinned, wild from seclusion
They jostle white-armed down the tent-bordered thoroughfare
Praising my Lady.
1281

A stagnant pleasure like a Pool
That lets its Rushes grow
Until they heedless tumble in
And make the Water slow

Impeding navigation bright
Of Shadows going down
Yet even this shall rouse itself
When freshets come along.
WS Warner Aug 2016
Existential ache,
Visceral and immediate
Occludes all reason,
A fated Solitude.
The myth of dearth,
In prose retold
Retaining fictive resolve,
Tacitly confessed.
Ineluctable Torpor
Petitions my
Ardent supplications.
Present,
Beckoned in the dulcet
Confluence —
Beauty and affliction
Freshets of silence,
Redressing the fallow
Surface of my soul.

© 2016 W. S. Warner
Farah Taskin Oct 2021
The painting of clouds
is
eyeful
Mermaids
and Nereids
forget
swimming and
gaze
at
the mackerel
sky
The nimbus
creates
a smoky blue shade
on freshets
I wanna catch the cirrus
I can understand the phenology and the hydroponics
I cherish the rumblings
of thunder
My distress
has been submerged in
a flash of lightning
Ken Pepiton Sep 2023
1.

Doing violence to enemies,
opposing forces, fighting friends
beloved antagonists, ag me on, indeed.
Let me be angry and you be awesome, as we
presume to make reasonable temptations.
Cure violence, make your mind a peace.

Solitary you,
with nothing but you influencing you, alone.

No enemy is in here with me, and my books
hold mere words. And what are words but thought?

2.

Exhalent dancing in sunshine,

sighing unsignifying beautiful curves,
nothings being said,
shown for the seeing, as art at the moment.

in some sense system,
an old and common one I met while
measuring my culpability, a point

is the finest imaginable mark to make in eternity.

3.

Ordinarily, as the hammer falls,
to meet the anvil on the second beat.
T' know.
Violence cures nothing,
knowledge does the opposite.

Is this good and evil fruit from one tree?

Is addiction mental?
Is mental cognate with spiritual?
How do habits work in co-inhabitation?
Yes and how,
I may tell you it is, if I am right
in my thinking, or if I am wrong
to the point of evil, taking

away the given life of solitary grace.
Spirit and truth in thought,
then words, repeated
to remember, recall

all we need, in oppositional states,
is a sense of order,
to be out of
in the court, where poets practice
homophily and strive to fit peace

upon the time whence all true tellings
spin off old threads across New Mexico.
- what if your dad gave Feynman a ride
- down to Santa Fe, in that old Chevrolet?
and Feynman told him the significance of chance.
In spun quark analogies of natural liberty
in order.

No yoke is lighter, less loathsome to behr,
mere thought we got in our kit, PIE old
as born again, anew, to day it until

the freshets all run dry. {Day as a verb.}

5.

Propose a purpose,
as when one fits a pattern, plaid
or paisley, vertical or horizontal plain

visionary wistful solitary man, thick fake,
feeling like Neal Diamond, and not knowing,

any why for these crumbs I cast into the sea.

Young sterile men, young bulls and studs,
suffer reality, as the act of living, as can be done,

under these same weight circumstances,
nitrogen and oxygen and all the other bits

of informed knowledge, fit for use, good or evil.

6.

Artisans and Partisans,
always feel some same pains, it's natural.

A hundred years ago,
my uncle, Malcolm, who represented…

the ancient clan's offering to the king,
who kept his own tamed dragon chained
to his priest's performance of the auspices.

Today is perfect.
The sun has also risen.

We may imagine poetry effecting ever,
after a day such as this shall be said to have been.

A hundred years ago,
my uncle, Malcolm, who represented…
the patriarchy of my mother's people in war…
pledged pawns in the hegemonies conservation,

in order to attract prosperity, pure form good luck,
the homogeneity of any wedom demands hands,
good hands, to do the work,
aligning religamental tendings to common pivotal

points. Precisely between one instant and another.

Cardinal quarks, six ways to someday,
the bottom quark.

No yoke.

7.

Nothing.
I'd have said Hadrons can't collide,
but I'd have never known if I was wrong.

I could have taught it as life's finest point.
The law of grave digging.

Initially, due to stink.
Miasmas, demanding, shreeking -
crawling with feeding biting flies, help

help, help us recall the survivors of that time.

Is it once in every other while, and this time
ours to examine, was our wedom's destination

now, or later?

Were there innovations emitting invitations,
to word plays with only elementals performing

haps as hap can, haps as haps may, haps in per-
fection of patience so sublime,

a teacher learns the old saw still cuts,

„Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot.“
\critical mass, Christmas carol - this is not the end/

Alexander Pope as quoted to Franklin by himself.

'men ought be taught naught as well. I said.

8.

From what I can recall of how
theories of everything stack upon a given point.

What.

Out acting what you verbalize, what you say you are,
homophonizing with the health of your countenance,

that sameness known best for it's use in stripping lipid
chains into sticky tiny pore clogging pus.

Certain madness is not anger, actually rage is madness,
not anger at its most useful
swat
at a pestilent misfolded truth contained
in a fly by POV.

9.

Listen, is that Earl? No, no
though he holds a certain Magnificent Obsession.
--- sweet Tuscan Nightingale song, from noble soul,
cursing ignorance and incapacity and
useless rules.

Ah, grammarized code of proper speech,

prompt my response to statistical chance,
best of luck,
that's their secret.

What were the odds, before the odds were
determined with existing data deterging the

inner and outer fields over lapping,
as might bubbles used as
Venn Diagrams, messaged meaning sensible

commonly, at this point in time.

Justice yet alluding us, nah nanna nah,
you can't catch me,

I'm not your disease.

10.

What true stories do, is teach.
Lying stories do that, too.

What we are, as human augments,
after thoughts in other words,
arguing augmentally in mind,
learning ai tested for facts,
repairing quarkish inner sense of knowing,
no one of us only spins one way when dancing
in the dark,

no one of us recalls another never met, as foe,
we all come in to fill the empty vessles, not a few,
as a swarm of wills let go to make honey in slain lions.

11.

Nature, reality, the universe, first song

makes life abide
by rules in timing ordered information
to eventually sink
to the top part of the bottom line.

Florence Nightingalian wisdom, amima-y-me,
she sweetly suggests
you take a bath,

and rethink the oddity of your being me, imagined.

Ignorance, incapacity and useless rules.
Interesting times, statistically not so long infected.

Manufactured consent among the governed,
housed in a single all enclosing story, a compleat
fisherman's guide to phishing in the future after all.

12.

So, and so, and so what… if I persuade
with sweets as all dangerous strangers do,

how might we feed our offspring milk and honey?

O, read another's mail in the spirit, eh, Galatian?

If any other come with another enhancement,
trust not that wicked messenger,
driving hex-head screws too deep to unscrew,

to hide links to the Pirates of the Macintosh,
not the face of the money, the spirit behind it.

People who can imagine the message Hello,
is enough, to make the magic pens manifest,

at the behest of the generational groaning,
howling for peace under the actual economy
of greed and pride.

And subsidized gambling links to stray hopes.


13.

These holy traditional non-private interpretations,
mine, for which I must be judged, I know, I said

I did, and I did, but you did not see, so
what
am I
sup-posed, under? Atlas and I, we shrug.

Anything is believable. Once we get the idea in verb.

Thirteen is culturally an odd number everywhere
cardinality spins on dimes novels mixes of messages,
left in print burned ages ago.
Impressions after Pulp Fiction.
'Zeke 17:1 is the real riddle under it all.

Lingering aroma is immediately different.
Stench.
Rotting corpses on some never buried battlefield washed
with raging water when the weather retakes time,

this is the time when Greenland greens,
and peace is sung, where no peace was,
and we were manifested as sons, wombed and un,
in the self same spirit of truth manifested as salve,
to a dry land.
Learning Odd Ordinals was the original title, thirteen little sentences in solitary with full wifi and my own collections of outer points called in to compress my wishes... at this point in time
Leshun Jul 2020
Mist becomes my eyes as I see you no longer
Pronged with the tounge which once  spoke sweet nothings to my light which vaguely glistens in its kingdom
My Niagara no longer falls but instead freshets, causing damage to all things which  stand  in its path,  smiting   the unyeilding
You became my opioid, your kiss was   my aortic
Your chest was my boid and your feelings became  metaphoric,  saying

Your peace is my blanket
Your body is my home
Between your thighs I rise
Connected become our eyes as I ****** my love into the abyss
Now I leave , like I never came
I am not a peasant in eden
With you I leave no trace, for I lied  because I knew you would believe them
Intended to bring change to your heart like a depository but my contributions were not of goodness
With your mind I was fruitful and multiplied, you thought you were befitting, as I occlude your shade, know that I was and am flitting...away
Sophia Sep 20
Dwellers in a chalk and limestone country,
We never knew the well-watered valleys of Eden,
Whose Four Streams never ran dry,
The freshets and the fountains of that garden.

For long, it is said, we wandered in the desert
Where all the streams ran darkening into sand.
For survival, we ****** the damp grit
And in the dry storms held each other’s hand.

Faithful we may have been, yet had no faith
To smite the living granite with a staff.
We were not the kind for miracles.
It was enough sometimes to hear you laugh.

And now we have come to our own territory,
No Eden, but the pastureland is good.
The waters flow here unpredictably,
But here at least is neither sand nor flood.

And we, the fallen lovers, knowing thirst,
Learned long ago to play the waiting part,
And have most joy in knowing after cloudburst
The winterbournes and swallets of the heart.
***Not my writing*** sharing this lovely poem by David Sutton.

— The End —