Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!

Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed it with blood for dew!
After the orange bars
That ribbed the green west dying
Are dead, O Lord of the Stars,
I come to Thee, come to Thee crying.

The ambrosial moon that arose
With ******* slow heaving in splendour
Drops wine from her infinite snows.
Ineffably, utterly, tender.
O moon! ambrosial moon!
Arise on my desert of sorrow
That the Magical eyes of me swoon
With lust of rain to-morrow!

Ages and ages ago
I stood on the bank of a river
Holy and Holy and holy, I know,
For ever and ever and ever!
A priest in the mystical shrine
I muttered a redeless rune,
Till the waters were redder than wine
In the blush of the harlot moon.

I and my brother priests
Worshipped a wonderful woman
With a body lithe as a beast's
Subtly, horribly human.
Deep in the pit of her eyes
I saw the image of death,
And I drew the water of sighs
From the well of her lullaby breath.

She sitteth veiled for ever
Brooding over the waste.
She hath stirred or spoken never.
She is fiercely, manly chaste!
What madness made me awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her poisonous body held?

By night I ravished a maid
From her father's camp to the cave.
I bared the beautiful blade;
I dipped her thrice i' the wave;
I slit her throat as a lamb's,
That the fount of blood leapt high
With my clamorous dithyrambs
Like a stain on the shield of the sky.

With blood and censer and song
I rent the mysterious veil:
My eyes gaze long and long
On the deep of that blissful bale.
My cold grey kisses awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her beautiful body held.

But --- God! I was not content
With the blasphemous secret of years;
The veil is hardly rent
While the eyes rain stones for tears.
So I clung to the lips and laughed
As the storms of death abated,
The storms of the grevious graft
By the swing of her soul unsated.

Wherefore reborn as I am
By a stream profane and foul
In the reign of a Tortured Lamb,
In the realm of a sexless Owl,
I am set apart from the rest
By meed of the mystic rune
That reads in peril and pest
The ambrosial moon --- the moon!

For under the tawny star
That shines in the Bull above
I can rein the riotous car
Of galloping, galloping Love;
And straight to the steady ray
Of the Lion-heart Lord I career,
Pointing my flaming way
With the spasm of night for a spear!

O moon! O secret sweet!
Chalcedony clouds of caresses
About the flame of our feet,
The night of our terrible tresses!
Is it a wonder, then,
If the people are mad with blindness,
And nothing is stranger to men
Than silence, and wisdom, and kindness?

Nay! let him fashion an arrow
Whose heart is sober and stout!
Let him pierce his God to the marrow!
Let the soul of his God flow out!
Whether a snake or a sun
In his horoscope Heaven hath cast,
It is nothing; every one
Shall win to the moon at last.

The mage hath wrought by his art
A billion shapes in the sun.
Look through to the heart of his heart,
And the many are shapes of one!
An end to the art of the mage,
And the cold grey blank of the prison!
An end to the adamant age!
The ambrosial moon is arisen.

I have bought a lily-white goat
For the price of a crown of thorns,
A collar of gold for its throat,
A scarlet bow for its horns.
I have bought a lark in the lift
For the price of a **** of sherry:
With these, and God for a gift,
It needs no wine to be merry!

I have bought for a wafer of bread
A garden of poppies and clover;
For a water bitter and dead
A foam of fire flowing over.
From the Lamb and his prison fare
And the owl's blind stupor, arise
Be ye wise, and strong, and fair,
And the nectar afloat in your eyes!

Arise, O ambrosial moon
By the strong immemorial spell,
By the subtle veridical rune
That is mighty in heaven and hell!
Drip thy mystical dews
On the tongues of the tender fauns
In the shade of initiate yews
Remote from the desert dawns!

Satyrs and Fauns, I call.
Bring your beauty to man!
I am the mate for ye all'
I am the passionate Pan.
Come, O come to the dance
Leaping with wonderful whips,
Life on the stroke of a glance,
Death in the stroke of the lips!

I am hidden beyond,
Shed in a secret sinew
Smitten through by the fond
Folly of wisdom in you!
Come, while the moon (the moon!)
Sheds her ambrosial splendour,
Reels in the redeless rune
Ineffably, utterly, tender!
Hark! the appealing cry
Of deadly hurt in the hollow: ---
Hyacinth! Hyacinth! Ay!
Smitten to death by Apollo.
Swift, O maiden moon,
Send thy ray-dews after;
Turn the dolorous tune
To soft ambiguous laughter!

Mourn, O Maenads, mourn!
Surely your comfort is over:
All we laugh at you lorn.
Ours are the poppies and clover!
O that mouth and eyes,
Mischevious, male, alluring!
O that twitch of the thighs
Dorian past enduring!

Where is wisdom now?
Where the sage and his doubt?
Surely the sweat of the brow
Hath driven the demon out.
Surely the scented sleep
That crowns the equal war
Is wiser than only to weep ---
To weep for evermore!

Now, at the crown of the year,
The decadent days of October,
I come to thee, God, without fear;
Pious, chaste, and sober.
I solemnly sacrifice
This first-fruit flower of wine
For a vehicle of thy vice
As I am Thine to be mine.

For five in the year gone by
I pray Thee give to me one;
A love stronger than I,
A moon to swallow the sun!
May he be like a lily-white goat
Crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for his throat,
A scarlet bow for his horns!

"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things." -Lemony Snicket

For all its ostensible simplicity, death is complicated for those of us who have yet to experience it. And while I appreciate Snicket's sentiment, coping with loss is not always this straightforward. It is not always possible to merely readjust oneself after the painful shock of losing someone we care about, simply because some relationships transcend illusory misstep; there are some people who are more to us than just the empty space through which we navigate and which confuses us and makes us feel silly when we realize that there was never really any reason to worry in the first place, and that we are going to be just fine.

In much the same way as realizing we've tripped over a non-existent stair, it is always uncomfortably surprising when we lose someone we know. It's a feeling akin to being suddenly and aggressively shaken awake from some mildly enjoyable, but generally monotonous dream. Like we couldn't have predicted as much, as if it were some exotic and unfortunate illness that only ever happens to people in newspapers. And whenever we are made to confront the painful yet obvious reality, it forces us take a step back and reevaluate things.

It makes us think of the deceased, and how we must readjust our view of the world to accommodate their absence. And yes, many times this adjustment amounts to nothing more than a brief moment of miscalculation and confusion. But there are some times when this is not the case, when the loss of a person causes an unmistakable and lasting difference in our lives. There is a rare and special closeness with certain people that some of us are lucky enough to experience, and which at some point causes us to unconsciously realize the verity and significance of these people's existence.

There comes a moment when a person ceases to be merely an imagined phenomenon, and forever becomes an integral piece of the staircase in the multi-storied building of one's life. The people who ineffably and eternally changed us; the people who inadvertently etched themselves into our framework and forced us to recognize their inextricable realness. These are the people for whom we do not become only momentarily disoriented when they leave. When they stop existing there is one less step, a permanent gap in the staircase. And no matter how much time passes, no matter how well adjusted we become, it will never feel quite right skipping a step, making the unnatural lunge over the empty space they've left behind.

"
"nor is this a fact," nor is my syntax the 'true.'
i can't use quotations in the way i'd like to,
to allow the paradoxical to seep through
in the sly act of revising 'this' honestly--
merging truth with falsity, to silently see--
grammar become a means to shatter certitude

"i can't tell the 'truth' with these ["i can't tell the 'truth'
with these{...} very words"] very words"; i really can't...
it's somewhat unfair to communicants, this rant.
let me bolster your trust by not telling it slant:
in fact, it's not poetry, not from this angle.
maybe when you read, this 'this' will be poetic?
meh, i'm relying on telling, not showing. so...
quiet's often better than such entanglement

but this is not about value, it's about truth.
sincerely, i doubt i'll keep those two separate

perhaps... if you pretend i'm a prolix parrot,
who happened through some acosmic accident
to be the transmigrated daimon-soul of Sappho,
or Hypatia, Gertrude Stein or Plath even...
(yeah, i'm like a Cretan for going on): they weren't,
'your gobbledygoo,' or 'Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.'
stripped bare at the Caesareum, being murdered
for the crime of godlessness or female wisdom
spoken in the scapegoat-hungry rule of Rome...
this is not what they were, not the whole truth, at all
and though from winds of ****** she spoke in verse
that her vast poetic fame 'was no delusion:'
and that, 'dead, I won't be forgotten,' i fail,
painfully fail, to trace into a verbal womb
the seeds of those that transformed all, yet now entombed...
for to remember them in me is to revise,
reduce, sadly in that poetic untruth found...

"this" is a gestalt, i guess i'll have to say,
a "figure-ground," a floating 'shape' in some context,
one that you embody too, somehow, not in text;
even through a distant sharing, it's realized
(hold onto the random metaphors you find,
they're probably better than what's in my mind)
and to share this with you now, to hypocritize,
it's lunacy. i mean, the moon, the poetic moon
is not a meme, is not a custom, is not a poetic fact,
in fact, it's not in this poem, and if it were--
being televised with some authentic ontic pixel-space--
here between the lines augmented mOOn for you
it would prove how unpoetic the poem is, and how
very true the moon is, if it were here, right quoteunquote"here"
ineffably punctuated
            -- well, let me try
and fail again to make Erasmus proud:
the quotes would hang about romantic beams
parentheses to echo adjectival spectra streams,
an underscore horizonal and asterisks for stars.
but not these * asterisks,
or those_types of underscores--
better (parentheses) and far more "quothy" "quotes"--
the punctuation would literally ^punctuate^ the sky of my text.
time would stop.                                                            ­                   and that would be poetic.
you don't need to breathe, even; not this 'you,' in this moment
(the one i've failed to capture):
'i will put you on the moon' i say,
'and sit you buoyant by the buddha-astronaut, who,
in answer to the question sprinkles moondust in slow motion,
symbol-guiding realness, my "finger" for solution,
to present to you again, what is present to me now.
the Russian names, the rest of names, the 'face' some say cries, "sweetly,"
as if we could use the moon's sympathy,
or as if we should feel it for the white rock that elliptically defines us,
dances to our rhythm, (the tides, the ****** huntress)
the one that taught us to dance,
the one that taught us to yearn darkly in surreal eclipse
more hopefully for the chance of cataclysmic doom
some Greeks thought it was a disco ball, after enough *****, that Dionysian night,
some Greeks thought it was a disc,
like a coin that flipped just right
to match it's dance about our pearoid earth
in synchrony's anachronistic mirth.
i would lick each Bacchant clean to learn the mysteries of poem
i would lick each Bacchant clean. period. no music or noema known
this 'poem' is not a "poem"
in a very real sense
i did not make this,
nor did i compose or create it.
if you're not following it's ok, i'm barely there myself -- i'm trying to refer to...
the elliptical shape that certain publishers use
to refer to fundierung
the double-founding,
reversibility,
the flesh of passive
the flesh of active
enfleshed perceiving
the common meaning we contribute
but can't attribute to any source we express!
(however distorted) after the fact, yes! --
either all that, or the meaning you get from "this" act
doubly-enfolded, with two pairs of hands kneading the same dough,
two pairs of eyes weaving the same lOOm,
another Indra's net to sew,
in meaning you give now,
the techne of your reader's mind
and the meaning i'd wish to know,
if i were still writing what you are reading,
doing my best to ignore the title
and to write something worthwhile...

i do wish i could show it to you the way i love it in your own poetry,
but you would know that, already, without my love

without my unpoetic lack of facts, my rhymes.
free of poems, free to flout the literary sea.
free to be unwordly, and let the contradictions fly
"

Sagaciously gloaming melanite eyes
Resonating euphoniously ululated memories;
The shadow land of illusion
Rising out of the ash of an acorn
Wallowing in the blood of wars strident refuge,
Gnomic relics errant of an
Enigmatic almondine heart
Offering an olive branch upon an
Altar made of oak.
A ruminantly nostalgic requiem
Sedititiously traversing the firmament;
Ineluctable reprobation
Ineffably manifested,
The doves of meta-morphosis
Embracing the silk garments of love;
Sound minds cacophany
Devouring the delusional devout
Veridically inspiring ascendancy
Decieving serenities whisper throughout
The dominions audaciously
Rousing ambivalent fears.



ELEETE J MUIR.

“I've realized,” I write, “the Groucho Marx of the mind is chaos personified. The Groucho Marx of *my mind *was chaos, I revise and already think I should revise again – “you never know where you'll end up,” I think, of me and of Groucho. Either way, Groucho Marx came to me in a thought when I was thinking about a poem I will not finish, that would have been about him. “We were just four jews looking for a laugh,” Groucho says at least twice – once when he was alive and once now as I invoke him – the heavy glasses, the synonymous greasepaint lip, the cigar – lit, with smoke that surrounds and engulfs me, threads tangibly through the air, through my eyes, and through the insides of my sinus densely, like mossy Eldritch Horrors and old movies somehow without stopping my vision. He has a mouth but it doesn't move, he is not alive – instead he is a ghost, instead he is dead but standing there, with me, in space lighted from within – space that's white like the smoke – thickly. Among all this, a ghost in a black suit. At least, I think the suit is black, or bluing black. It is tinged with 50 years of rotting celluloid, and paired with a white button up underneath – no tie.
         Growing up all five of them were poor, very poor – so poor they were Jewish-in-New-York-in-the-early-1900s poor. Forced outside of the world, into their world from birth, while their mother, Big Duck, put them up to instruments and got them begging early – vaudeville was their daddy after all (“after all” being a refrain in the poem I'll never finish, repeated like a mantra – after all! after all! after all! after all!– in that text, and used like a drug – afterall – and always driving deathward to an end that never came and can't, after all is written down) – with the jokes they told and sang and played, on their piano, harp, and banjo, all the time – and here is how she learnt how well Chico could play the piano, and how well Harpo could play the harp. And how poorly little Groucho played the banjo. The shame she felt, the shame she must have felt – but here my poem consumes them, because I am already sure that childhood is wrought with fear of birth order, sure as I am that middle children lack something, and maybe have something for that lack, but It's me, not Groucho, that takes over, saying Groucho was the obvious middle child, and of course lacked Big Duck's approval – Big Duck hated the banjo strumming and myriad puns he threw, I say – puns being a part of the poem, the poem which would have (but never) ended on Groucho ducking soup. I wanted it all as a joke and still do, but who will disappoint? Who could? There are options – Groucho, myself, the poem, etc. all working poorly. It is hard to imagine the lack that would culminate in a poet – maybe this gap is wider than a middle child – writing three brothers into a brawl, cartoonish in the streets. May be even harder to imagine the discontent and fear at work inside a child of five – birthing chaos. Maybe I misspoke – I can't know,  I'm not a child of five.
                  Groucho is dead, is still standing in front of me expectantly, not moving. Right in front of me when again I hear his voice – reanimate and filtered through a phonograph – weakly rising above it's own eroded texture – “I was misquoted, I was misquoted... Quote me as saying, 'I was misquoted.'” I wanted his life entropically spinning this place, spinning throughout this place, a ghost – to live forever is to die forever in every gaunt lie, misquote after misquote re-shaping our dead selves until grotesqueries we never intended are held comfortably under our name. Groucho, aimless, escapes because he pre-empts – he uses his whole self to decimate his cultural body, to save the self he's sacrificed. Groucho means to become a void, or Groucho becomes a void more correctly – Groucho means nothing, can only mean nothing, because he's focused his words – his self – around his lack – the words' lack. Because the words always lack, and Groucho is all words. I see him take out the greasepaint container, which is in a shoe-polish-looking canister, and then I lose Groucho again to facts – he was the outsider using words to one up them. I see his wit like a weapon. His being in Hollywood was a stress on Hollywood's peace of mind. I see him tearing balsa wood from up under the street and chucking it into styrofoam towers, which crumble. I see the SUVs that swerved to pass him run into walls, deflating the cars and the walls while the drivers run screaming with ketchup pulsing from the real wounds in their necks. This is where my poem was – more or less. My poem had Groucho gleeful – “Groucho skips, Groucho skips, Groucho skips,” it said, “down the streets throwing rocks at cars...” – the melodies of my naive poem's schoolboy nihilisms never broke enough – “In Groucho's perfect world every day would be spent disrupting traffic, smashing bugs and ******* everywhere,” it said because it was too young to understand, because it had no void, and could offer no revolt from meaning – revolution being radical agency expressed through violence against every order, hatred for every structure including itself – in Groucho's perfect world really there is no language and no one knows what happens after all.
            Lingering is the thought that Groucho means something – lingering is the vaguest, most insistent and warlike imprint of a metaphor on Groucho's face, ineffably moving me to continue but Groucho is no friend, and Groucho is not with me, because the Groucho of the mind is not Groucho, Groucho hates the mind, and Groucho negates all possible Groucho's so the imprint is not Groucho's. The ghost is a misquote, the poem is a misquote, the letters are a misquote, I am a misquote – and this is a misquote too. His cigar (growing bigger) is puffing out that white cloud smoke but still I can see him – the smoke just goes into the space around us, the space that redacts and recreates itself every time I consider it – a copy of an 18th copy, with only Groucho remaining in all iterations, like the borders of a decomposed jpeg quietly losing logic. Groucho the lie, Groucho the memory – a man shaped around the falsity of metaphor and language – floats, as subject, through my memory – punctum with no point, void. Here he is – naked, a stark black silhouette I'd never claim. He's staring, but he's not staring at me because I'm not there. What's left is overstated nothing – the ghost of a man who negated logic, left in the mind of a poet who has long since given up on the man, and soon will give up on the poem.”
There is nothing left here. I am alone, I am dizzy – overcome with boredom.  I want to say, “Groucho is not here, was not, cannot be here” – I know instead I need to end on a mute point.

You deluge my eyes
                                           In aqueous bombs
                                   Because you love me
                                       In ways that defy existentiality,
                               That hallow my spirit,
                                 That quake terraqueous Gaia,
                                   Exhale me as a Cosmos
         ―Of the Cosmo-Plexus of the Wildest Love.

Consecrate me O Niveous Dove,
           With thine pearlescent eyes
      For love
   (Ineffably tender)
                                Is your Gender.

                             Pain is my golden raiment,
                                          Dirge and piety
                                   For you
                                             Stir in my soul
                                                    By the thew of your
                                     Beauteous, Tempestuous Affections.

Create in me
An intemerate heart;
Impregnable,
For then I will know
That the Silver Wings of Dreams
Are impregnable.

How many million galaxies there are
Who knows? and each has countless stars in it,
And each rolls through eternities afar
Beneath the threshold of the Infinite.

How is it that will all that space to roam
I should have found this mote that spins and leaps
In what unutterable sunlight, foam
Of what unfathomable starry deeps

Who knows!? And how this thousand million souls
And half a thousand million souls of earth
That swarm, all bound for unimagined goals,
All pioneers of death enrolled at birth,

How were they swept away before my sight,
That I might stand upon the single *****
Of infinite space and time as infinite,
Who knows? Yet here I stand, climacteric,

Having found you. Was it by fall of chance?
Then what a stake against what odds I have won!
Was it determined in God's ordinance?
Then wondrous love and pity for His son!

Or was it part of an eternal law?
Then how ineffably beneficent!
Each thought excites an ecstasy of awe,
A rapture rending the mind's firmament.

Infinity -yet you and I have met.
Eternity -yet hand in hand we run.
All odds that I should lose you or forget,
But, soul and spirit and body, we are one.

Is this the child of Chance, or Law, or Will?
Is None or All or One to thank for this?
It will not matter if thanksgiving fill
The endless empyrean with a kiss.

I am in love with
Melancholy.
He is the sweetest of suitors,
Bedazzled in jewels that glint so smoothly,
And just enough,
And right in your eyes,
To shield you,
Maybe protect you,
From his abuse and his repetitive,
Cyclical nature.

He is so handsome in any light.
I sometimes love to just stare at him
And contemplate the rigid, weepingly gorgeous
Features that make up his seraph's face.

There is a sharp angle just beneath his perfect
Ears, which hear me splay cheeky compliment after
Cheeky compliment toward them.
This angle turns into his jaw,
Which opens up and down, not like a hinge but rather a
Hatchet, to tell me
So many lies.
He presents them just so - as lies.
But he sways them so wonderfully,
So persuasively and professionally
That I can do nothing but fall
Asunder to this dark suitor's mouth.

He pulls me towards him,
Like the Earth pulls the Moon,
Like the Spider pulls the Prey,
Like Love pulls the Fool.

Intoxicating, really.
His lips move like planets.
They orbit around his weightless voice,
And they spin on their own axes,
And sometimes they spin toward my own.
They plant themselves like magnets,
As if we were meant to be,
And they move in harmony,
Just as hard and stubborn as magnets,
Just as ineffably wonderful we sometimes
Find physics to be.

But then they release -
He releases.
He floats backward, his beautiful
Demonic grin enticing me,
Telling me, "I'll love you and
Leave you, and you can do nothing do
But enjoy it."

My Melancholy.
My beautiful, beautiful angel who blots out the night,
Sweeping the stars together to form a
White, blinding fingerpainting that he tapes to the heavens,
And delivers unto me what I believe is daylight.

But then his head bends back,
Exposing that beautiful hatchet-jaw,
And his crackling fire of a voice beams
Like headlights right into my doe ears and eyes.
He cackles, tells me he loves me,
And flies away.

At the foot of the Cross stood the Magdalene
with Mary, his mother, and John.
Jesus was now in extremis-
the curious people had gone.

The mark of the whips were upon him,
an ugly bruise under his eye.
Blood filtered down from the crown made of thorns.
dripping down from his face to one thigh.

Mary watched as her eldest was dying.
Bore her pain with incredible calm.
She wished that, his agony over,
She’d hold him once more in her arms.

With breath that was labored and shallow
He spoke with his life nearly gone
He commended young John to his mother
And commended his mother to John

He looked at the Magdalene sadly
With a love that’s ineffably rare.
Then with loud voice he cried out to Heaven
A fool might think this was despair.

Joseph of Arimethea
came with a ladder near dusk
With the help of the Priest, Nicodemus
He took the crucified Son from his Cross.

Mary was silently weeping
at the body of Christ in her arms.
She looked at the King Pilate murdered.
Whom the people had greeted with Palms

There's always been something
so Hollywood about her--
and I don't mean
21st Century *******.

I'm talkin'
Judy Garland,
you're the bee's knees
type of Hollywood.

Now, listen'--
this girl--
I'm talkin'
Bombshell-Cutie
(she'll blow your
******'socks off).

I'm talkin'
Cinematic Beauty Queen;
skin freckled with film grain
the same way the night sky
is freckled with constellation,
mouth parted like velvet curtains,
only to reveal the sweetest prose.

She is Mystique-Fatale,
blazon in colour
among dull, sepia tones--
an Oz among all
the dreary Kansases.

She is allure and poeticism,
hair curled grand,
dressed to the nines
in lace and satin
(they wonder
what lies beyond the
half moons of her *******
and the slit in her gown,
if the butterflies
run rampant
between her knees
like everyone says).

Do not underestimate her--
she is both
Shirley-Temple-Sweetheart
(her kindness
does not falter)
and Pinup-Girl-Honey
(one would not think
to challenge--
to break--
a woman
so prolifically brazen,
but they try anyway).

In a world filled
with actresses--
please, darlings,
save the acting for
the stage,
******* it--
she is so ineffably herself.

She does not reserve
her emotion for
the theatre alone;
she is not afraid
to cry, and--
Jesus--
when she cries
the earth shakes
with the very profusions
of an opera singer's vibrato.

And, God,
you should hear
her poetry,
brimmed with images
picturesque and tragic,
straight outta the movies
it would seem.
Yet, her words
ring with something
so inconceivably real.

And that's what
you've always loved
best about her--
she is the truest person
you've ever met.

It's a shame, then,
that you wouldn't stay
for the grand finale.

But,
with or without you,
this show must go on.

(and it has).

Two particles zooming quickly away
Forever linked no matter where they stray
They've become entangled, their quantum states
Eternally joined in cosmic play

Such is the bond between our souls sublime
Unbroken across all of space-time
We've become entangled, ineffably linked
Our lives fused together in perfect rhyme

At the foot of the Cross stood the Magdalene
with Mary, his mother, and John.
Jesus was now in extremis-
the curious people had gone.

The mark of the whips were upon him,
an ugly bruise under his eye.
Blood filtered down from the crown made of thorns.
dripping down from his face to one thigh.

Mary watched as her eldest was dying.
Bore her pain with incredible calm.
She wished that, his agony over,
She’d hold him once more in her arms.

With breath that was labored and shallow
He spoke with his life nearly gone
He commended young John to his mother
And commended his mother to John

He looked at the Magdalene sadly
With a love that’s ineffably rare.
Then with loud voice he cried out to Heaven
A fool might think this was despair.

Joseph of Arimethea
came with a ladder near dusk
With the help of the Priest, Nicodemus
He took the crucified Son from his Cross.

Mary was silently weeping
at the body of Christ in her arms.
She looked at the King Pilate murdered.
Whom the people had greeted with Palms

There used to be a time
When I was ineffably afraid of the darkness.
The beguiling blackness
That seemed to size me up
And consume me whole
I suffered
From an acute fear of the unknown

But I'm a little bigger now
And the darkness beckons
It's the truth that makes me groan
The everyday mundane
The cycle of the known
And now, all I wish for
Is to ride out into the darkness with you
Not to Sunsets
But to a place in the valley
Where everyone can see us
And yet no one can see us
Take me away to the beautiful unknown.

Sleep, sleep, dream about his mother,
how surprised you have been when she proposed,
that we should visit
              and give it a try
         in fresh air, at semi-high mountains,
we can wash there the old soft blanket.

You're holding her in your arms
      and swing your memories.
              
The translucent sea
          water is curling waves kissing
             one tiny piece of our great mother's web.
                Earth has sandy plains
   We are shores of time awaiting
                   magnificent wave of fortunate

Fate.

White coral necklace on the bronze, beautiful shaded
delicate skin; breathing mild Mediterranean.

   Scents.

Fishermen have captured seabasses, seabrims
      gasping for air on the wooden deck of Aurora.
             Two kids are crashing the sea urchin's armor
   with a stone.
Shield.

This contrast transfixed his attention even more
      on the contour of her graceful figure
and ripe ***** waiting under her summer dress to ..
       He could not withdraw his gaze.

At that moment.

The urge of yearning attacked his intricate muscles
      belly was on fire and he knew at that precise moment
          his lips were destined to kiss this charming cusp, this 
ineffably bronze spot between her neck and a slick collarbone.

Someone is already stroking on strings
        The chords of cello have blended everything.
Even the
Bundle of hot dust.

Around.
You may view seagulls. Flutter.
         Their gaze, and the sun particles may have caressed you.
                                             
All in the highest promised secrecy of silent
                Transformation. From silence to melody.
From forms to underlaying space.
      Time.    

Guards and fights are between me and you. From teen. Age.
        Albeit ! Albeit! Murmuring sounds have just overlaped the sensible reason. My usual rhythm pounds with frenzy
I can not ignore. Her! Her!                                Her!


             Me!
I hide among the crickets.
Their song allures me attached to your scent.

Woman. Lemon trees flower.
Mandarins. Laurel. Olives.

I look up at the whitest cloud and in it's form
                          There's the image of us..

Morning. Diffuse light
through frost painted panes
xylophone alarm quantifies reticent consciousness

warm sheets a Siren Song
or ****** Lotus beckoning
to stay in comfort and familiarity

crawling to a vertical orientation
jerking into up-right ambulation
the still tepid bed implores you to stay

Dredging subconscious anxieties
nebulous worries swirl; full blown gale
Lightning fears & thunderous uncertainty flash behind groggy eyes

Backhanded ocular rub
quells queasy qualms
life is ineffably uncertain

But there’s excitement in ambiguity
satisfaction in resolution
interest in intrigue

invariable inevitability
only begets; stagnation, complacency,
boredom & apathy  

Uncertainty is positive, perhaps
a necessity even  
but then again the bed is still warm

Don't ask me why I haven't texted you good morning in a week and three days and don't ask me why I open your messages but never reply.
Don't ask me why I stopped sending you inspirational quotes or cute pictures of cats
but please don't ask me why I stopped writing about you
because I haven't been able to.
I simply stopped sending them to you with a piece of my heart attached
because I don't think you'd care to read my most honest 3am thoughts
about how I love the ineffably perfect things
like how much you love your fuzzy socks
or how you wish you could sing.
Don't ask me why I don't text you good night anymore
at exactly 9:00
because all I would be able to say is

"I wanted you to notice me and it seems you only noticed when I do nothing
and sadly those two are the same exact thing."


-k.d.

I
Oh life, you unfulfilled *******,
All seeing eye of admonition,
You unfair precinct of justice,
You incredulously cruel myth,
Oh, How I hate you
Oh, How I want to leave you
Oh, How I love your counterpart more,
Death.
She seems easy and trouble free.
An impenetrable kingdom of night.
I wish I could fade into oblivion sometimes.

II*
I'm three year strong of my grand depression.
It's not always there now,
but it is.
And so am I.
And so are you.
And so is my lacuna,
my friend,
who invivorogated my sense of purpose,
who gave me a reason to live.
She has been
My net I fall onto everytime
you push me down from the trapeze act of my passions.
The medicine that nurses my wounds when you leave me bleeding.
My ventilator as my soul was dying a slow sad death.
When you **** all my hope away
she plants it back again deep in my heart
impervious to your morbid touch
tightly sealed with her warm kiss.
I am scared to be happy because of you,
because every time I am happy
you decide to give me a new **** reason
to be ineffably sad.
You know where it hurts me the most
which parts of me, is most tender and vulnerable,
you know my weaknesses
you use it against me like an old friend who is now an enemy.
Why can't you just let me be ?
I'm tired, so **** tired.
It's alright.
I have my love,
and I'll make it through the day
and spit in your apathetic face.
I ******* hate you,
though you are beautiful okay.

Of course I'm a poet
What else could I be?
In the beautiful light
That taught me to see
With intensity shown
and with such constancy
The terrible light
That forced me to see

The luminous sadness
The light brought in its wake
That lodged in my heart
And oft' caused it to break
And filled me with wonder
For wonderment's sake
By revealing my soul
The light doomed it to ache

The light came in slowly
With each new regret
Each instant of pain
I could never forget
The sadness malingered
Ineffably set
As if telling a joke
That it dared me to get

And each new misfortune
Brings with it the last
And backward through time
Backward into the past
'Til I start to surmise
How my die is cast
How some new disaster
Is following fast

So I am infused
With this pain and this fear
And this wonderment at
All this beauty that's here
I feel that the linkage
Between them is clear
The price of such insight
Is terribly dear

But this light is something
That everyone shares
Though often obscured
By everyday cares
By friendship and glory
And great love affairs
The soul is appeased
Ere it seeks out the glare

But those worldly things
On which others thrive
Seem all but mundane
I don't feel deprived
For it is the vision
That keeps me alive
Of course I'm a poet
It's how I survive

When I tried to tell you
I couldn't think
I couldn't feel
I couldn't breathe
So scared.

So ineffably difficult and painful
Emotionally. Physically.
Panic and regret and worry
Emotions heightened so greatly

You were clueless when I tried explaining
But when you were told by someone else
You found it hard to believe
It was impossible you said.

And when I told you myself
I didn't know what to think
Terrified it'll come crashing down
Terrified we'd lose it all
I couldn't think
I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't feel
So scared.

At last you understood.
It all fell into place
Now you know
Finally
All that worry for nothing

I'm glad you know


© maria.who
(comment below please)

Once, when forever was merchantmen
And time sold in bottles,
Once, when the nocturnal Almighty
Opened the skies to eyes of stars,
I had wings that existed wholely
Like two sides of an ethereality
With the miracle of an illusionistic existence.
       Wings which sang unto open blue
Skies with all the light of a star,
Wings flashing like a storm lightning
And the caress of the moist rain at my
Feathers, the calm of the night.
     I was an angel right?
Once with glory and rhythm
And all the harmony of ineffably
Clear minded hope, did you not pray
Upon the dazzlingly Divine,
Like mercy in flight over the
Sprawling desolation?

Yes, yes I have taken the fall,
The ravenously singular fall
For the lust of a woman and twisting
The Heavens, but I have awaoken suns,
Flown with meteors and shedding
The brilliance of light in the dark,
Even the fullness of the Cosmos
I have known since before when
I danced with constellations and evoked
The deeper lyrical prayers
Of madmen!

One day,
I will lay upon the exhausted earth,
Fall asleep upon the deep soil,
I will dream infinite things once
Again, and I am still in love with you.

You were engulfed, in flower beds, by pink
clouds and wooly masses, dogs and fishes,
waiting for some game to load, I think.
This is ineffably, inexplicably daunting
how my mind harasses hours in some fade out mode.

I was manic, forged by panic in unhealthy
seas and waves. This thing we have, how it behaves,
is clueless, sightless, blind yet anything but fightless.
We aim to work for all we want,
I can't stop thinking, linking every action,
every contraction that has lead me to feel for you.

You were hidden, I was shortly ridden of the smell,
the hairy distractions, predicting how I ought to live.
Though you give me answers, I have no more questions
for every doubt is swept away.
Even when I play I can't be wrong, neither can you
in any thing we'd think we'd do.

We're always right and always winning,
don't forget, we're only just beginning.

Take salt for sea. And blue for feeling.
Litmus blue, say it will, squalid yellow
are the dead and the living continue on,
  swept onward.

Take air for flight and space for descent.
  When you are held, raised into this,
you will fall at last – take a sudden slither
   of skin as farewell, catacombing mist
  as    salutation but

   you      go    ineffably

whenever, well-paced,
     well-oiled,

you will continue on
  despite
     final   exhaustions.

girls in lithe dresses
  still in photographs

they hurt like daggers—

being this young
  hurts like a dagger, too as
their eyes divine something
  in me,
or their hurtling way of being so
    ineffably in place
  and i, placeless,
  skin flushed hot
   like receiving a multitude of tongues,
    this juvenility,
   everything around me is lissomeness
     just— tryingly closing my eyes
hoping to be awakened by the roaring
     of blood in vein,
  put to sleep by a lapidary brush
    of hum: a delicate soft-petalled song
       but i am a child
   lost in a field
         of various flowers.

THE 1st
I have known you not long, believe me
Girl - friend, and I am not joking
You have become so dear to me,
Like a light ray, endlessly darling.
You are warming me by radiant hopes
You are valuing me, my feelings, you.
Your moral aid’s giving me vital force,
You are awake the whole night through.
Being together we won’t die
Our plans to live are plain!
Two stars bright’ll light up in a blue sky
After our dying again.
{2018}

THE 2nd
Winter has burst forth again. Nature is
Measuring the camisole of snow hard.
“It always happens year in year out”,
Say you and you seem to be right in this.
You say looking at me. What affecting
Tenderness’s your glance containing. You’re almost
The princess in a holiday attire hobbling
When it is so necessary, the horse
At full tilt, don’t quit, be with me longer, please!
Your character, steel will, features are dear
To me up to pain, no one’ll find your peer
I love to be with you, my honey bliss.
{2018}

THE 3rd
Country meadow as the carpet of camomiles,
A nice girl’s standing in the field.
“Volodya, your poems give me creeps, thus”,
She says without being bewildered.
Her plaits as cornfield have spread over her
Shoulder- blades as a brook. The girl is
Very beautiful, her voice’s ringing so
Clearly as if it were the nightingale’s bliss.
Her eyes are like winter waters
I am enchanted by their depth.
Freedom’s wind secluded corners
In soul. Peace’s in my soul’s wealth.
{2018}

THE 4th
I’ll sit down by you, my sweet, filled with joy’s
Tune, under crown wood noising by blessedness
You are the most lovable among girls
You are my most true, darling, princess.
Your bust can be compared with ripe poppy-heads,
Your pimples juicy are luring me.
You are my long- awaited berry, my goddess
Pure for my being able to be.
We’ll crown our conjoint life’s happy
Cup by the last straw not being in the cold.
You are ineffably beautiful now, sappy
You’ll be beautiful whrn you grow old.
{2018}

THE 5th
Hard parting is the wisest of the wise
And the word’s expressiveness’s in my soul.
Oh, woman’s lot, what for are all these pangs?
When will it end once and on the whole?
And what for is this punishment at last?
It is related to sword of Damocles.
The distance separated both of us,
Every night I sob of all days those.
Every day I read in correspondence your
Poems–how sweet is to be Muse! And
I’ve erected obelisks in your honour
I won’t be able to forget your type grand.
{2018}

THE 6th
Accept me, please, my wonderful girl- friend,
Accept me absolutely and my poems.
And I’m ready to reveal you my yesterday’s
Sins in my rear leisure’s hours.
Understand me, a poet artless, please,
Who’s got used to love so elevated.
My sonorous style’s more terrible than pistols’
Shot, feeling’s calling’s as the vow on blood yet.
I don’t smoke or drink brandy or whisky,
And terrors are often unknown to me.
You are my Angel so dear, close, friendly,
And my idol sung in my poems free.
{2018}

ЛЮБОВНАЯ ЛИРИКА

ПЕРВОЕ
Я тебя недолго очень знаю
И поверь, подруга, не шучу:
Для меня ты стала как родная –
Ты подобна светлому лучу:
Ты меня надеждой согреваешь,
Мною непомерно дорожишь –
Мне морально сильно помогаешь,
Хоть ночами целыми не спишь!
Мы с тобою без вести не сгинем –
Наши планы – жить – они просты!
После нас, подруга, в небе синем
Две зажгутся яркие звезды!
{2018}

ВТОРОЕ
Зима вступила вновь в свои права
Камзол из снега меряет природа.
«Всегда так происходит год от года» –
Ты говоришь, и, кажется, права.
Ты говоришь и смотришь на меня –
И как же много нежности во взгляде –
Почти принцесса в праздничном наряде,
Что на скаку стреножит и коня.
Не уходи, побудь ещё со мной!
Характер твой, стальная сила воли –
Черты твои мне дороги до боли!
Такая милая, мне нравится с тобой!
{2018}

ТРЕТЬЕ
Сельский луг как ковёр из ромашек!
Чудо-девушка в поле стоит.
«Мне, Володя, твой стих до мурашек!» –
Мне, стесняясь, она говорит.
Её косы как хлебные нивы –
Растеклись по лопаткам ручьём.
Эта девушка очень красива –
Её голос звенит соловьём!
Её очи – как зимние воды –
Околдован я их глубиной.
На душе снова ветер свободы,
На душе наконец-то покой!
{2018}

ЧЕТВЁРТОЕ
С тобой сяду я рядом, любимая,
Под древесною кроной шумящею.
Ты из девушек – самая милая,
Ты принцесса моя настоящая!
Твои груди как спелые маковки –
Меня манят бутончики сочные!
Ты моя долгожданная ягодка,
Ты богиня моя непорочная!
Чашу жизни совместной счастливую
Завершим мы последнею капелькой.
Ты сейчас несказанно красивая –
И прекрасною будешь старенькой!
{2018}

ПЯТОЕ
Мудрее мудрого тяжёлая разлука –
Невысказанность снова на душе.
О, доля женская, за что такая мука?
Когда она закончится уже?
К чему сейчас такое наказанье –
Оно сродни домокловым мечам:
С тобой нас разлучило расстоянье –
Я каждый день рыдаю по ночам!
Я каждый день читаю переписку,
Твои стихи – как сладко музой быть!
И в честь тебя воздвигнут обелиски –
Я не смогу твой образ позабыть!
{2018}

ШЕСТОЕ
Прими меня, прекрасная подруга –
Прими как есть, прими мои стихи.
И лишь тебе в свой редкий час досуга
Готов раскрыть вчерашние грехи.
Пойми меня – нехитрого поэта,
Привыкшего к возвышенной любви.
Мой звучный слог страшнее пистолета,
Признанье чувств – как клятва на крови.
Я не курю, не пью коньяк и виски
И часто мне совсем неведом страх.
Ты ангел мой, такой родной и близкий,
Ты мой кумир, воспетый во стихах!
{2018}

Translator - I. Toporov