The Lady is a month to me, A title and half her name;
Her mask sustains the mystery, the beauty beneath the chains.

The pompous men explain, about Christ in all his passion,
But they know not the pain, of a life spent folding napkins;
To serve and serve in silence, with no whisper of complaint,
The quiet of a painting and the patience of a saint.

Hold her petals gently, lad, but the stem you must grasp firm,
My Rose, a perfect pupil, never shy to grow and learn.
I'm sorry if I crossed you, it was only with respect,
As every rogue treats treasure, we must mark it with an X.

I could only give you words, and sadly I have known,
In truth what you deserved, was a kingdom of your own.
The maid will get her palace, and her carpets crimson red,
Fine wine in her chalice and gold ropes around her bed.

But first, we'll to the ballroom, along paths with gems inlayed,
The bedding will come later; there's other games yet to be played.
We'll dance there, Miss December, On the garnet tiled floor,
And every stance of mine will render, Love incarnate; underscored.

I know I wasn't perfect. No, your Highness, not the best,
And though I haven't earned it, for your kindness I was blessed.
So now lend your Bard his drummer and he'll sing for you a tune,
Compare your eyes to summer, if your name was Lady June.

Yet, I think the winter fitting, and I do not mean the cold.
For I'm on concrete city benches sitting, dreaming of your soul.
I sit beside a western shore and look at western seas,
The water has no more joy for me, the Lady's in the East.

The poem turns to rambling, but I'm half-drunk and it's late.
I only hope she's understanding, what my garbled words would state.
You know your Master's only letters, not a thing to see or feel;
And though I can't do better, at least for me, the words were real.

Immortal Review
I stand before this marble stone statue once you were just a block your potential passion held the key
The form the lines were followed by truth even in unyielding matter you find the way that is hidden
Touch with fingers as the blind you will see in this way and no other, uncompromising this the passkey
Details don’t lay within easy reach a masterpiece that endures through the ages birthed in blazing fire

Pathos captured given limitation then allowed to accelerate in lofty expression softest shadow finds
Recesses define the inlayed motion livens this that lies in perfect stillness from this art in stone speaks
The unquestioned ideal the essence of romance this indefinable mood his quest he strikes he defines
By measured degree he sets them free to pose to make all those that see recognize and believe

Immortal stirring grasped held fast souls without tangible existence now will tenderly embrace
Space will be their crowning achievement in this dimension they convince by intense scrutiny
Each visitor will by their living movement point by point each portion then as a whole will make the case
Moved by ancient distillation carried through time its power only increases it never diminishes great art

Bathed in beauty indefinable treasure holding its own court all else it removes to distant bounds
It lives a rarefied life in light and shadow the heights are visited it s very presence proclaims dignity
Human standards ebb and flow in classical taste the bridge is crossed the divine is at last found
Your blood line does not read or speak any more a common language in these achievements discovery

Of every death
Preceding this moment in time
As I stand before a painting
Of a young woman hanging drowned
In a scene inlayed
With thoughtless flowers,
Which death is it,
Exactly,
That renders Millais' Ophelia
With its beauty?

The work alone has form:
Flora, depth, the colour of minute lights
And the image has concept:
A woman, dead in water.
Ophelia lives in an image and a play:
One moment, one story
Resting on the temporal slopes
Of this painted pinnacle of signs.
Why did Shakespeare write
About a woman pushed to suicide
By the death of her father,
At the hands of a heroic lover feigning Spiritual vacancy
At the request of his own undead parent?
Does every woman share this fate,
Or is it fantasy -
Attaining psychic substance
Through a kind of impossible insanity?
In other words:
Is Ophelia's death,
So chosen by Millais
And Shakespeare in turn
(Whose names are poetry)
A mimetic echo of a million mortal moments?
Or is it the prophecy of a time yet to come
For which death has been moulded
In a looping narrative cast,
Made into a word describing
Some sacred foreseen feature -
Which is it:
Does meaning sink into the past
Or fly into the future?

Reprimanded cityscapes
Land fated in concrete slates
Date with disaster
A trait of nuerosis. Faster and complusive
Make moves on asphalt, elusive
Straight abusive of late
Centuries to make lenses of fate
Baited humanity
Takes debates of philosophies, psychologies to heart
Makes them fate
Mythologies and anthologies
Satiate the reasin we procreate
To recreate humanity in gods vision as we see today
Irregularities and tragic parodys parry us back to where we began. A ferry from the lqnd of eden. An apple eaten
Adam and Eve forbidden, corrosive and up for biddin'
poison inlayed in veins
You aint kiddin when you say youll eat my brain.
Sin and evil slain, i run back and forth in place between the yin and yang

You aint lyin when you say your insane. I love it baby
its just change not sense
In inflamed with your scent
Smell it everywhere i go
Youre millions to cents
Like a fairy lullaby or maybe Khoas
You shake, maybe we could lay in intamacy for infinity
A love song this became
Cadence inlayed in the movement of streets that seperate us. In sheets that penetrate us.
Imperative lust, imperfect trust
Who are you? a cusp between picses and aries? do you carry all that i felt and shared. Take care but hear in my lair, defeated lain upon slated heroes shared upon plated zeroes
Old ideas pirroueted like leos on a dance stage. Im a leo on this stage but you lay in my bed not sure if all i felt and shared is truly cared for.

Pale-faced beneath twilight’s awning, shadowed time skips
A beat measured in dust motes and attic silence;

Frameless ether holds its breath and portrait likenesses
Swivel eyes right, suspended between the minute and the hour;

In sequence, Whittington’s chiming sepia tones wring out
A tulip of port and one last cigar from drapery long hung;

As floral meanders unwind from a walnut casing
Inlayed with the gamine whimsies of our cherried youth.

If I could turn back pages maybe I would
rewrite some history
although what use would it do
I would be right here
upon a rotting piece of lumber
hundged over
staring into the flames

If I could show you what I see
when I peer into the thickets of brush
when I teeter on the edge of what could be
a halt to all that I know, or we know

If I could lend you some advice
take what you will
that this path led
was contructed on broken hopes
repaired by fallacies
continued on by what appears to be good will
although I peer through my windshield inlayed with insect

If I could splatter the worries upon translucent glass
under hard force I would
watch it shatter, explode into a million little specks
let it peel away with sunlight and rain

Maybe that is what I will do,
let everything decay like this log
set a blaze
may they ashes blow and wilther away
But who I am kidding,
it will be awhile before anything changes.

This place had met annihilation
How long ago none could say
But it's ruins yet stood
Among the hills and forest valleys

I walked among such ruins
Since I was young
Yearning for the sights and sounds
This walls held in their prime

The craftmanship was unparalleled
Gorgeous even in destruction
The inscriptions on pillars
Beckoned me as if alive

I could never read them
For I knew not that old language
The language of a lost empire
That rose in distant ages

In my latter years I now shudder
Having studied that ancient tongue
And recalling the passages
Engraved upon those marbled archways

They spoke not of great conquests
Or kings and heroes of old
No they served only as warnings
For the generations to come

The penultimate inscription
That lay upon the palace walls
So important it was inlayed
With obsidian and gold, read thusly;

"No Utopia may exist upon this Earth.
The perfection of man is a troubled one,
Doomed from its inception.
Man seeks to put forth into the world
What does not reside within him,
And so he corrupts the world
And himself in the process.

Oh how little you know,
Son of the Second Moon.
When..."

Beneath the etchings I remember
The bones of four men
About them lay rusted chisels
And other carving tools

I noticed as well, that the inscription
Appeared unfinished
As if the engraver was stopped
Forcibly before his work was done

I reached out to touch the groove
The final character never filled
With the obsidian and gold inlay
It was colder than stone should be

But that is all I remember
As I appeared to have passed out
And woken up with the gentle sun
The following morning

On a night where the wind was dry and arid
coming off a summer day of rain that left the surrounding woodlands humid
trees sticky to the touch, their red-brown bark left dark by the torrential downpour
now it seemed a clearing gave way in unnatural air
everything within the radius, dry and hot as sand in the desert there
not one wet blade of grass nor trampled twig
not even morning dew graced flowers that blossomed outside the huts
on the occasional sprig
in the center of this drought stood a lone tower, only a head taller than the tallest buildings
and still not as tall as the mighty trees beyond the surrounding woods
wherein lived a fell and gnarled creature, once human
who long ago had communed with magick forces for a wicked bloodprice
cursed to hold the borders of this meager keep against all life for its lifetime thrice

With a flourish they walked across these loose dirt roads
a dress laden with intricate gold against green cotton and silk
inlayed against such decorated, attentive details it seemed
with every rise and fall of the ***** that it covered to take on its own life
with every step and slightest breeze, to dance away from the wearer
a ghost trapped, tethered to the vain spirit of flesh that owned it
who's to say if a mason saw this, a bricklayer, the architect or some knight-errant
who had settled, no, in fact it can't have been the Knight-errant
Ser Hobbe was he, of barrel chest and light armor, with the club and leather shield to match
his manners, errant not to court a maiden, though the beauty enchanting him lived
and breathed, life into a person wearing her, the Garment of Green and Gold

Trees fell as the well-traveled road from the castle felt farther away, and well supplied
the people settled a village, small, in a reasonable clearing near to a river
with plentiful game and resources, intending to make it larger by calling upon workers
once they had established a safe foothold there and a system of order approved by monarchy
which lent itself to the tower rising, one floor first.
Housing the nobility, some cousin or other related to king and queen who lived weeks away
they stood in the barren home, admired the hearth and stone, then ordered it as if the earth itself would stand on command
to "rise" and "make it greater"
with only a crew of few able-bodied guardsmen sworn on their honor to the noble blood,
and all but two working at their behest, it became a setting for a coup in this development

Two stories. Another half or third, not quite as full and even as the first that housed who became known as the Wizard
though they are unknown themselves, only that the nobility found them and enticed them
took them in, and they were witnessed by Ser Hobbe, who was sworn into their service
no longer errant, now a Knight of their blood, promised the garment and its possessor in return
as though he were retaining a corpse that had been stolen from his care on the way to a proper burial,
as soon as Ser Hobbe was permitted this price, he took it in fashion,
the Wizard, an advisor on alchemical things, medical and magick to the nobility
it is speculated, was there in service to offer assistance to an ailing noble
be it the wife or husband, it has never been known, but in what became the attic
that incomplete, roofed over, third of a story that was itself the third floor
they were established themself, a center to operate
it is said that for months following the completion of the Tower
neither Ser Hobbe nor the Wizard were anything but venerable to anyone
anywhere in Ford-Moore

A ritual, tongue dipped to the root in ink for that
captures the essence of the wronged whose voices cannot speak
with curses that run as deep as their entire life, the heavy iron-gall
burnt wood mixed by mortar and pestle poured over the throat
and words in a language of blood-magick druids of highest orders have long forgot
whispered loudly the gallows-making cost onto these thatched-hut pigs to slaughter
that was heard and incomprehensible, as birds fled from trees, deer were scared towards people
rabbits hopped, and rain fell with heavy, pounding, driving, blinding force and fog
encircling the lot, an ancient voice that can only be conversed in once for the cost of two lives
one taken to make the poultice in preparation to receive the knowledge, and another to be the bearer of the power
every word symbiotic with something human eyes look upon and hear, but to listen and see a mortal mind cannot
one of the nobles, never know why or which, enacted the toll on the other and inherited the Tongue of Rot
it is said then that first the Wizard was alerted, and that Ser Hobbe was second to know
both quartered in the Tower, the Wizard scrying saw madness and sensed Hobbe
who was gripped by the fell Green Garment, as he wandered through the hall below
bursting through the seems of that cursed thing he sought,
his face stained with a pleasant, warm grin and the blood of the maiden owner, he faced the Wizard over the dining table
two dead nobles mere rooms away, Ser Hobbe an unwitting champion had an unshielded mind to the plot
with his might and club he was as formidable as the Wizard was, and they did not smell blood in the air before they fought

Rain fell so heavily there was no passage to or fro
no matter, as wandering forth from the Tower came a sinister glow
and all that is surely known is the faces of the dead then after, were contorted with the look of an everlasting nightmare and woe
they said for three times the natural life of anyone, as long as they walked past Ford-Moore East, if the sun was low
you could still see the sparks inside the tower from the battle raging, and feel the presence of all the residents warning you death awaited beyond the border; wise children and men regarded the wives' tale not to go.