I hate the dripping dark hollow behind the little wood;
Its tips a cursed maroon with a blood-red heath.
I think I praised and lamented it too soon;
Before seeing its scent; I saw already its stray mystical death.

My crown is torn, outraged by florid winds and scorn;
Like a tangled old roots of the windblown thorn;
I shall feel scanty by my own poetry,
And throw it about, duly, like a static little joke.

I shall let my heart grow dull and illiterate;
I shall not taste joy, no more, in any clear--flowery fate.
I shall seek everything bitter, and not sweet;
Even not pure as the honey of a bee; for it shall be plain.

I shall curve and bend any straightforward light;
I shall harass it, and blind it--as if my ghost’s dead soul is very not here.
Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Perhaps she is astray in my memory still, and not by my side.

I feel relieved so soon as glanced at her beside me;
She owns still that full lips like a perniciously tasty moon;
She is adorable like the flower of heaven itself;
She strikes me again when away, and tosses me about when near.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
Tame me again with thy rain of laugh;
Saint me once more like a fresh young bird;
Come to me now, and return my unheeded love.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And kissing her forehead takes me back to that day;
A day of myths, a day of agile swans and storms;
An ornate time of hatred; a whirl of bitter fate; a dust of sorrow.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And again I was alive in this tale, with a burning heart;
On one eve of tears, a mischief, and a wan poetry;
I caught about shadows in which there was no soul of Maud.

I could only see the stones, lying ghastly about the fireplace;
Ah, Maud, are you but still haunting those whimsical moors?
Their strange murmurs but I cannot hear;
But still they consume me, ah, I am scared;
I wish they would be gone soon, I wish you were but here.

These storms were amusing but peculiar;
They are bizarre, but intelligent and stellar;
And calling thy name out but breathes into me strength;
Ah, but should I be here, and bear away thy image alone?

Ah, and thou wert in but nymphic and lilac dream;
And my heart was still not massaged by the tender storm;
For it meant thee, and hungered but for thee only;
And in the midst of love had it longed, and yearned for thee.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Her with her childish eyes and rounded head of bronze,
With her rapturous steps and wild glittering aroma,
With her atrocious jokes, and a wintry secret touch?

But still she was not anywhere about;
She dissolved like one romantic bough of soda;
And within a rough joke, she would be but gone;
And now the storm returned, but I was wholly on my own.  

Ah, and now the striking storm is mounting the earth;
Should I write alone and chill myself by the green hearth?
For I hath nothing to console and lengthen my parched logs;
I shall wait outside and drift about yon wintry bog.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud with her heart-shaped face and bare voice aloud;
A voice that soaked my senses and craving throat;
Maud but teased me and left me to that joke.

Where is but Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
Maud, the goth princess within my ancient poetry;
Who but remained symmetrical and biblical in her vain torments;
Who but stayed sturdy and silent; amidst her anger, and vain fellows’ arguments.

Listen to me. I am but full of hatred.
I am neither a gentleman nor a well-bred;
I, who is just a son of an infamous parson;
A malleable son; with a bleak aura of a putrid spring.

I, one who crafted ingenious jokes;
But interminable as they always are;
I made Maud sit still as I held my woodwork;
While she perched herself on yon bench, gazing at dispersed starry stars.

Maud the shadow in my pale mirror;
At times she ceased at morns, but retreated at night;
On her brother’s sight she fled in horror;
But on mine her smile turned me bright.

Maud was idle, sparkling, vibrant, and tedious;
Her heart was free and not marred by stupor.
She was the sun on my very bright days;
She made me startled; she always left me curious.

Maud the green of the farm, the red of the moon;
Without her everything would spring not and remain odious;
Everything would be bleak and stayed tedious;
Ah, but still I could not own her, though I was her saviour.

I was a farmer and perhaps still am;
Perhaps that’s why her mother ditched me with shame.
Maud said she had not places like home;
Her house was the mere shallow--and gratuitous throne.

Maud came often down and agitated;
Her mood shadowy, she cried and cried too aggravated;
I caressed her back, and placed my palms on her white knees;
She told me stories whenever no-one else would see.

She wanted not to mount the throne;
She giggled often, at our country escapade;
She loved my cottage, she sweetened my thin grass;
Even those apple trees had then her eyes, which sprayed tough, lonely seas of green.

Maud took to hymn and dear children’s little songs;
She was popular always among the talkative throngs.
She would love to dance and wiggle and turn around;
While village pupils gathered to sing a noble sound.

Ah, but when the mirthless prince arrived;
With white horses and swords of a knight;
Maud was swallowed every morning, all through day and night;
Maud was no more seen by my side.

I thought I was not alive, for dreams were unreal;
If they had been, then they I’d have want’d to ****;
But seeing Maud not gave me fretful chills;
I often woke up tensely, within a midnight’s shrills.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Maud my bumblebee and my delicate little honey.
I kept waiting for her behind the rustic brook;
I fetched my net and fished by my old nook.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
My eyes were still and my chest could no more speak.
I wearily fancied she had been kidnapped faraway;
She would be jailed in a sore realm, and would no more be back here.

Ah, for had she been lost, then I had lost my ultimate pearl;
For there would no more be magic, there would be no more of her;
No-one would so restore my original spring;
Perhaps there would be no spring at all, and I would suffer in summer.

And I would lose anyway--my lyrical, elusive demon;
For Maud had always been elusive herself.
She wore that evil smile and thin laugh;
As I told her tales of fairies that she loved.

As I am fond of magical poetry and dramas;
Maud too used to read them with genuine personas.
She was my epic fanatical little devil;
She liked tropical cold and a faithful Mephistopheles.

I should be Faust, as she once said;
For had I fair hair, yet a bald head;
She said like Faust, I was cleverly amusing;
But to me, like Mephistopheles--she was unusually entertaining.

She danced before me a beautiful ballet;
She was young and keen to levitate as a ballerina;
She crafted me limericks and such fair lines of sonnets;
She made earth my heaven, and my melodies a twin cantata.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
I need my butterfly amongst this wheezy curdling cold.
I need my lover to soothe my chained hysteria;
I need to get out of here, and feed my love with her charms.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud, is not she here?
I was then screaming in my solitude, could she but not hear?
I could speak not, no more--sore and wounded by this snowstorm;
I crept sick and weak like a dumb old worm.

She was not even heard of upstairs;
While I was dying here as a roaring beetle.
I hath almost lost all my creative flair;
I felt tormented and neglected and nearly feeble.

Ah, but a story like this is not such a fable;
So at that time I did shun sadness and seek a warm ending;
But indeed, to escape fate the poor were perhaps not able;
And the farmer’s son shall never be a king.

And ‘twas the nobles’ right to be idyllic;
To be deemed far then fairly righteous.
My charms were trivial, and so was then my wit;
My prayers were too parted and despaired; no matter how rigorous.

I kept my work along the countryside;
I toiled all night and behind fierce daylight.
I hoped Maud would see me back one day;
But what I found was to my dismay!

Ah, Maud, for she was now engaged;
To that pathetic creature the cursed morn brought about;
And parties arranged, voices too raised;
The union was now what people had in thought.

Onto my shoulders my head kept sinking;
I killed myself nearly, for my irksome defeat in this rivalry;
A rivalry that failed to transgress vital destiny;
A rivalry I could not even bear to think.

But again, this love had always been everything;
And thus Maud’s union would equal my death;
One night I crept out of my bed;
I had in hand a keychain and a net.

The soldier was infused by sound sleep;
And into Maud’s grand chamber I crept;
Everything was pink and quite neatly kept;
But woke I her not--as I heard her breast breath slowly.

She was tremendous still--in beauty;
Maud in her splendour; so young and free.
Ah, she was free but not free, I fathomed;
I looked at her over and over again.

I looked at her violet bed and comfort net;
Ah, my Maud too ****** and temptingly red.
She was too abundant in her young and chaste soul;
Ah, I could not imagine how she would soon be one else’s.

Long did I stand; ‘till morning streamed back again;
Still I remained unmoved; I stared at my darling in vain.
I jumped startled as the door opened;
And showed me the horror of the Queen!

‘Come, ye’ fool’, she voicelessly instructed;
Her face emotionless as these words emanated;
‘And embrace thy very fate’, to the handcuffs me she directed;
‘For daring look into my dame’s immaculately flawless chamber’.

She pointed thereof--a black gun at my chest;
It would soon burst out and tear my vest;
And even fly me straight to death;
So drifted I, without further haste nor breath.

Those poor soldiers imprisoned me there;
A cellar room at the top of filthy stairs;
I stayed awake only for grief and tears;
And most of the time I laid about sleepless and stared.

I grew skinless as my bones squinted;
And laughed at me with their sordid might;
Flies were about me, bending onto my rotten pies;
And slices of meat left out by sniggering guards.

I hit my head on witnessing Maud’s cold marriage;
‘Twas on a Saturday on the castle’s rain-wetted field.
I heaved myself onto the windowsill and saw;
How the couples were blessed and sent thereby back.

I could not see Maud’s face and fleshy cheeks;
But didst I feel her discarded tears;
Marred and defiled her lovely fits;
Though just those innate, and not out there.

I struck the lifeless paint with my bare palms;
Now the walls were tainted; they smelled like my blood.
Time passed and desire for Maud was never killed;
I’th missed her every day, since then, and perhaps always will.

But my love for Maud was never probable;
I was decent, honest, but indeed not preferable;
I was not even preferable by fate, as thou might see;
Fate who is neither truthful; nor frankly urges us to lie.

I often laid hopeless by the moonbeam;
Until night came and eyesight grew more and more vulnerable.
I waited ‘till it was dark and left to day no more gleam;
Then took my journal of Maud’s jests and read her affable poems.

I turned around--and would disgrace my bed still;
I was plain starved but had no desire to be properly fed;
Of a dream of death I grew instantly pertinacious;
And of my future tomb I grew fonder--and yet rapidly curious.

Ah, but my sweet Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
And deliriously she somehow became pregnant;
But remorse said she kept the souls of two;
And fatefully could not make them both perfect!

I indeed plain prayed for Maud’s survival;
I cared not whose sons they might be;
Ah, but the twins were still sinning babies--as I comprehended,
For they were formed not from cells of mine!

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
And during those last days she was cautiously ill;
And a drive of cholera had again grown widespread;
But she was not maddened; by it she was not marred.

She was sickened by temper still;
And the prince found dead, she grew more terrifyingly ill;
She had a pure heart, so she flourished not over the beast’s death;
Nonetheless, he remained the father of yon sickly offspring.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
I was duly growing perfectly anxious;
She was to give birth--ah, to those little ignoramuses;
And within a little chord in one or days of two--she would do so.

But without a father to care for her notorious sons;
And even I was locked away, and could not do so;
I was terrified, I was horribly undignified;
To learn this stern reality we were so sullenly faced with!

Ah, not now! I could not too believe my ears!
Maud and her children were dead--they’d been stillborn;
Before they left Maud alone to receive her fate;
Her locksmith would not come; he had another due in a nameless town.

By the time he arrived my darling had gone;
Perhaps she was now shimmering in heaven;
Enchanting her children with her enormous spells;
Narrating stories no plain human could ever tell.

Even in heaven my love would perhaps be famous;
Her tenderness would make other angels jealous;
And angered by envy, they would gather and complain to God;
How an earthly soul could be more vivacious than their heavenly were.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud and her chain of songs that were never to be broken;
Maud and her familiarity with gardens and blue lilies;
Maud and her immaculate pets of birds that still sweetly sing.

Ah, but where is my darling, my darling, my darling;
My eternal ocean, my hustling flowerbed, my immortal;
My poem, my enchanting lyric, my wedding ring;
My novelty, my merited charm, my eternal.

And now she was longing for her grave, as I’d been told;
For I’d been told by the dimmed torches and fuss and mirthless air outside;
By the endless wandering and the prince’s wails and wordless screams.
Ah, my Maud had now migrated from her life--but attained her freedom!

And he was thus unworthy of being in her heaven;
Her heaven where there would be me, her true love;
And thus he would be glad to greet his fires of hell;
He would marry an evil angel there--and make himself again full.

But I’d be with Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
I’d be again with my gem, indefatigable little darling;
Whose voice was unsure, whose poems were never known;
But ‘twas enough that they’d been known to me, her secret--ye’ dearest lover.

So took I, that spinning penchant and a circle of strings;
The edges I matched to the chains on my ceilings.
I braced myself for my very own fiery death;
But again, I’d be with Maud and death would no more, aye, be sad.

Thus the above poem was done by my spirit;
But with the same token and awe of genuineness and wit;
I feel tired--I shall close my eyes, and thus enjoy my heaven now;
For my wife and starlings are all waiting for me to-morrow.

It is now nighttime in heaven;
And there is indeed, no place on earth lovelier;
I gaze into my wife with a loving madness;
Her cheeks sweeter still, than any proudest swiftness.

I shall take my vow of marriage tomorrow;
My proud wife sitting in yon angelic chair by my side.
I shall cradle, then, those white little nuptial fairies;
They are Maud’s children’s, but lithe and gracious and bow to me in chaste mercies.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is but all mine now;
I am still surprised now, as sitting by this heaven riverside.
One even grander than the one I’d had beside the lake;
Which I often farmed when I had needs to bake.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is a ghost but as ever lively;
We are both dead but she boldly remaineth lovely;
I know she is worthier than serene jewels or mundane affairs;
And still she is worthier all the same, than any other terrific palace--or heir.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, and this war is but all over now;
Thus let us dream dead of the exciting tomorrow.
We shall see life and our children grow;
We shall witness delight--and miracles none ever knows.

Vespertine, fatal dream
Mistress conjuring shapes of night
Seventeen little fiends
Elegy for a demon’s plight


Alone in my study, sitting
before a roaring fire
Visions so ******
they churn desire

With the dead of night
summoning hellish zest
They come to incinerate
my corrosive flesh

The hymns of *St. Lazarus beckon solace
from the cathedral outside
But I linger here in the bowels,
where my ancestral sins reside

Animistic stares gazing through
these dead-soul dreams
Where another horror story is not
always what it seems

Portraits of deceased queens
looked down at me with blackened eyes
Layers of muffled screams
festered while judging my vacant lies

Years before, my grandmother watched
over me as a boy in his bed;
Endless, ambiguous rhymes of prayer
are what she often said.

She promised to ban the spirits
that steadily linger
But dark twisting hands
outreached and took her

The monsters and invisible abominations
have always been here
Following my whereabouts,
watching me year after year

Subtle ghosts keeping my heart
and house cold
I sat and waited for what my
icy breath foretold

The dreams, the demons, the ghosts
all that severed me
From experiencing the love of flesh
I so forever longed to see


Came the hour the church bells rang and tolled


The dread of things to come
The moans and cries had begun

From lissome shadows and corridors
Like Charon beating souls with oars


Creeping evil fled
to the refuge of my home
To reap the sins
that my family had sewn

The rippling, screeching strings
of a malevolent orchestra
Scored and produced themes
worthy of infernal Sumatra

The flames in the fireplace
surged a green incendiary wall
From the hell mouth jaw emerged
a dark figure I saw.

Mother Mephistopheles,
            clad in silvery pieces with a pale face
            Manifesting atrocities, her emerald eyes
            welcoming our embrace

I backed away from the sights in,
my trance lost in her glimmer
But the noises and choir peaked
in a swarming fit for a sinner

In a gush of surrounding ash, Father Selaphiel materialized
The otherworld lovers reunited,
their bond revitalized.

“We come unto thee, Son of Faust, heir to Blake.”
They said in unison like a choral demon snake

“Create a fleshling worthy of a child, of many in one
So the deeds of your family’s sins can be undone.”

I stared at the figures with execrable bewilderment
Fearing my sanity had seeped through my temperament

They threaten my eternal existence with continued torment
A living anguish that would solidify my hell-bound descent

“What must be done?” I asked these surrogate advisers

And they instructed
A body made from flesh and metal
Of dead and living components
Blessed and cursed
From God and Satan
Men and creature
Using their collected powers
to merge with the night
I swept across the villages
and cities to obtain the materials
Now all these years, I’ve wondered
Why my medical expertise had been put to waste
“Did the demons prevent me?” I pondered
“Or did they aid me?” I concluded in my haste

Innocent or not, I claimed what I needed
To rid myself of the terrors deep-seated.

A steel-woven chest piece
and half-incinerated cadaver
Twenty feet of large intestines;
boys, girls didn’t matter

Shelled-out cranial cavity
with cerebral cortex to match
Mixing bladders and gallbladders
worth its catch

Punctured spleens and insolent creams
Circulatory, digestive, endocrine,

Iron bones, infused tendons mount
Smells and rancid odors spilling out

Guts, pus, worms and maggoty brains
Boiling in holy water with dried remains

Sacks of chain mail and velveteen potions
Seething concoctions conflate emotions

Patches of caustic skin made like adamant leather
Bolted with steel fingered brutally severed

Into gauntlet armor, this mechanized abomination
Personifying my sickened, wailing degradation

I showed Father and Mother my life’s work and creation
A flesh-iron shell waiting, they stood with appreciation

“Vespertine…” they called to the collage of my work
They petted its face while the shadows continued to lurk

Seventeen little fiends and creatures
appeared and surround
The moon shined through the glass
and the room around

The Seventeen shadow children became smoke and entered the monster
Now a being both ethereal and corporeal

My sins and demons locked in my own creation
Mother Mephistopheles and Father Selaphiel
Left Vespertine in my care

All that plagued me
All that haunted me

Personified, solidified
And barely alive.

My half-dead servant.

and Halloween child

A falling feather on the breeze,
lilting like the Seraphim
songs of Mephistopheles,
lured her drunkenly to him.

Lilting like the Seraphim,
she drank his iridescence. He
lured her drunkenly to him,
enraptured in naivety.

She drank his iridescence. He
befouled her virtue, was the air.
Enraptured in naivety
no more, would Eden hear her prayer?

Befouled; her virtue was the air
he stole away, a hunched-up thief.
No more would Eden hear her prayer -
the echoes howling his motif.

He stole away, a hunched-up thief,
a fallen feather on the breeze;
the echoes howling his motif -
songs of Mephistopheles.


Footnote: Passages from folk lore:
Hindu - the peacock is said to have angels' feathers, a devil's voice
and the walk of a thief
Chinese - a girl who looks at a peacock could become pregnant
Islamic: the peafowl carried Satan into the Garden of Eden after consuming him

Pennsylvania, 1948-1949

The garden of Nature opens.
The grass at the threshold is green.
And an almond tree begins to bloom.

Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii!
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae!
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus,
Salvete!—says the entering guest.

Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree,
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp’s wing,
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans,
Will not descend from a mulberry bush
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path.


But a rhododendron walks among the rocks
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell.
A hummingbird, a child’s top in the air,
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion.
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout.
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief,
As he’s been called, more than a magician,
The Socrates of snails, as he’s been called,
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man?
In sculptures and canvases our individuality
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes.
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon,
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn.
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber.
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves.
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter.
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir.


Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child,
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern
Of things, if only he understood the pattern,
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others,
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly,
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art.


To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks,
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains
And settled in the forests of the continent:
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud,
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh,
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly.
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat’s bow.


Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray.
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour
In the silence, senses tuned to a ******’s lodge.
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast’s
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes.
I am not immaterial and never will be.
My scent in the air, my animal smell,
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the ******:
A sudden splat.
I remained where I was
In the high, soft coffer of the night’s velvet,
Mastering what had come to my senses:
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel.
It does not know time, hasn’t heard of death,
Is submitted to me because I know I’ll die.


I remember everything. That wedding in Basel,
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy,
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips,
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine.
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin,
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk
And the dress opened like a nutshell,
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly.
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch,
In pits where the arms of various creeds
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars.


Perhaps this is only my own love speaking
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity,
Obsession, bar the way to it.
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden,
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs
Are spared the distortions of memory.
And the grass says: how it was I don’t know.


Splash of a ****** in the American night.
The memory grows larger than my life.
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever.
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs,
The tufts of their *** shadowed by ribbon.


Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks.
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids.
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes,
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb,
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity.


Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk.
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt.
We are both the snake and the wheel.
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting
and not lasting. Where the parallel lines intersect,
Time lifted above time by time.


Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
Formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thaïs?
And what is Julia without a butterfly’s down
In her eyes, her hair, the smooth grain of her belly?
The kingdom, you say. We do not belong to it,
And still, in the same instant, we belong.
For how long will a nonsensical Poland
Where poets write of their emotions as if
They had a contract of limited liability
Suffice? I want not poetry, but a new diction,
Because only it might allow us to express
A new tenderness and save us from a law
That is not our law, from necessity
Which is not ours, even if we take its name.


From broken armor, from eyes stricken
By the command of time and taken back
Into the jurisdiction of mold and fermentation,
We draw our hope. Yes, to gather in an image
The furriness of the ******, the smell of rushes,
And the wrinkles of a hand holding a pitcher
From which wine trickles. Why cry out
That a sense of history destroys our substance
If it, precisely, is offered to our powers,
A muse of our gray-haired father, Herodotus,
As our arm and our instrument, though
It is not easy to use it, to strengthen it
So that, like a plumb with a pure gold center,
It will serve again to rescue human beings.


With such reflections I pushed a rowboat,
In the middle of the continent, through tangled stalks,
In my mind an image of the waves of two oceans
And the slow rocking of a guard-ship’s lantern.
Aware that at this moment I—and not only I—
Keep, as in a seed, the unnamed future.
And then a rhythmic appeal composed itself,
Alien to the moth with its whirring of silk:


O City, O Society, O Capital,
We have seen your steaming entrails.
You will no longer be what you have been.
Your songs no longer gratify our hearts.


Steel, cement, lime, law, ordinance,
We have worshipped you too long,
You were for us a goal and a defense,
Ours was your glory and your shame.


And where was the covenant broken?
Was it in the fires of war, the incandescent sky?
Or at twilight, as the towers fly past, when one looked
From the train across a desert of tracks

To a window out past the maneuvering locomotives
Where a girl examines her narrow, moody face
In a mirror and ties a ribbon to her hair
Pierced by the sparks of curling papers?


Those walls of yours are shadows of walls,
And your light disappeared forever.
Not the world's monument anymore, an oeuvre of your own
Stands beneath the sun in an altered space.


From stucco and mirrors, glass and paintings,
Tearing aside curtains of silver and cotton,
Comes man, naked and mortal,
Ready for truth, for speech, for wings.


Lament, Republic! Fall to your knees!
The loudspeaker’s spell is discontinued.
Listen! You can hear the clocks ticking.
Your death approaches by his hand.


An oar over my shoulder, I walked from the woods.
A porcupine scolded from the fork of a tree,
A horned owl, not changed by the century,
Not changed by place or time, looked down.
Bubo maximus, from the work of Linnaeus.


America for me has the pelt of a raccoon,
Its eyes are a raccoon’s black binoculars.
A chipmunk flickers in a litter of dry bark
Where ivy and vines tangle in the red soil
At the roots of an arcade of tulip trees.
America’s wings are the color of a cardinal,
Its beak is half-open and a mockingbird trills
From a leafy bush in the sweat-bath of the air.
Its line is the wavy body of a water moccasin
Crossing a river with a grass-like motion,
A rattlesnake, a rubble of dots and speckles,
Coiling under the bloom of a yucca plant.


America is for me the illustrated version
Of childhood tales about the heart of tanglewood,
Told in the evening to the spinning wheel’s hum.
And a violin, shivvying up a square dance,
Plays the fiddles of Lithuania or Flanders.
My dancing partner’s name is Birute Swenson.
She married a Swede, but was born in Kaunas.
Then from the night window a moth flies in
As big as the joined palms of the hands,
With a hue like the transparency of emeralds.


Why not establish a home in the neon heat
Of Nature? Is it not enough, the labor of autumn,
Of winter and spring and withering summer?
You will hear not one word spoken of the court
of Sigismund Augustus on the banks of the Delaware River.
The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys is not needed.
Herodotus will repose on his shelf, uncut.
And the rose only, a ****** symbol,
Symbol of love and superterrestrial beauty,
Will open a chasm deeper than your knowledge.
About it we find a song in a dream:


Inside the rose
Are houses of gold,
black isobars, streams of cold.
Dawn touches her finger to the edge of the Alps
And evening streams down to the bays of the sea.


If anyone dies inside the rose,
They carry him down the purple-red road
In a procession of clocks all wrapped in folds.
They light up the petals of grottoes with torches.
They bury him there where color begins,
At the source of the sighing,
Inside the rose.


Let names of months mean only what they mean.
Let the Aurora’s cannons be heard in none
Of them, or the tread of young rebels marching.
We might, at best, keep some kind of souvenir,
Preserved like a fan in a garret. Why not
Sit down at a rough country table and compose
An ode in the old manner, as in the old times
Chasing a beetle with the nib of our pen?

Writing about you is cheap and easy:
Fast-food poetry.

I can queue you up in ink
Wherever a pen is given to me
With little more prompting
Than that soft black hair,
Those unhappy eyes.

You're new old shoes,
Worn thin around the edges
And where the world weighs the most,
But I reach for you for every long journey,
For every quick trip.
I wear you in line
At the McDonald's in the airport.

I don't order anything,
But I pour you onto napkins
And let you flutter away-
Nothing new.

'Q

Thunder beckoning my tribe
Of foreign hunters from the sky
I fly on wings of solid steel
Centuries of anguish to appeal

He rides the lightning from afar
While trailing from a shooting star
The fiercest wind, a crashing sound
Mephistopheles inbound

The Satan's spawn, demon of wrath
Is on a malevolent path
Onto a rendezvous of  souls
Intent on taking all control

He hunts the weak to gain his power
Until will come the final hour
A battle between beast and man
The fight to take the promised land

In days of six and nights of five
The promised one will be revived
He will forsake his own
To sit upon his mighty throne

The innocent will be beguiled
All hatred will be reconciled
But this will all just be a hoax
And the world will be engulfed in smoke

Miasmas of the blackest night
The death of innocent by blight
Inseparable of death
Inoculating breath
Is taking hold of me
Suddenly I can see

And from the sky there comes a sound so loud!
In my mind I am alive again, though gasping for air.
I say please, save me!

They take my hand and I'm above the clouds.
And lighting fills the air.
And everything is energized, we're floating!
And I can see myself over there!
It's not over; he's back, the final conspirator!

So I grab hold of him, and I start punching him, but I'm just a boy!
They were there with me, my comrades, and they attacked him with the various building blocks.

But he unleashed a fearsome attack. All from his body it exploded. Shrapnel made a mark to me.
I fall feint.

And when I wake up there he is; Mephistopheles, standing over me.
I say, Mephistopheles! Why??
And he say, because there is no point!
And I say, what does that matter? You don't need a point to be happy.
He said, now, that happiness isn't everything. And he stabbed me in the neck.





But in my very last breath, no longer inoculating me, he say that it is to live that is to mean and that death is just to be as much.
I gasp!
Then it all fades again, this time for good. But the last thing I see, my comrade is falling down upon him and the final blow ends it.

Yeah, he got his wish.

Man has the power to
Engender greatness and to
Persevere while
Holding great burdens upon his shoulders.
In spite of the dark regressions
Steeped in his fiber and core.
To levels unspoken. Master
Of all that he surveys.
Passions abound and goodness of
Heart. has
Elevated him over and over again to
Leave animal instinct and  
Escape and to great heights to
Soar like an eagle past Satan's grasp.

His name is mephistopheles.
A demon arch-devil spawning atrocities.
The 8th layered god , who controls all dark monopolies.
A Repo demon for waged souls.
Reaping out of what other people sow.
He never leans left, or chooses the right.
He Just Works for the devil, reaping its evil out of the night.

I'm sitting in purgatory
A deserving end
To my ****** story

You think you know who I am
But you don't know what I've done
Some call me the devil
Some call me his forgotten son

I'll take your heart at the start
And say you have mine
Once you realize I'm empty
I'll leave you all alone, crying

I've done a thing or two
That I can't say I regret
I'll dig into your memories
Make it impossible to forget

They say that there are monsters
That live under your bed
But I lay beside you
And plant doubt in your head

Now the question to ask
That you'll have to figure out
Am I talking about someone different
Or am I describing myself?

Asmodeus* is left to breathe nothing but sand

Belial is trickery and is partial to Man

Charon is only influenced by what is paid

Dagon will bake whatever can be made

Erebus guards his own darkness under his own tree

Furfur  his army is more legendary as a legion to see

Geryon his sentry at the gates ensures leaving is not right

Hetu-Ahin even whole at Dawn you are not safe at Twilight

Itzcoliuhqui is the ******* of all that is cold

Jezebeth is articulated as all falsehoods that are told

Kasdeya wallowing 5th in line to never be king

Lilith who Adam thought would make him sing

Mephistopheles not the true leader just a fawning servant

Nyx Incestuously in love with her brother Erebus

Orthon can take on any or other form

Philotanus will assist when the fortress is to be stormed

Qanel is alone in a canal of strife

Raum his command means Furfur is under the knife

Seth Rules the Egyptian underworld with an iron fist

Tando Ashanti Takes seven on seven and will never miss

Uphir will ensure that all Demons stay well

Vetis will make sure all that Holy comes to Hell

Wele Gumali is as black as the darkest sin

Xaphan makes sure that all are comfy and warm within

Yama has dogs to take care of all the junk

Zagam** is just a drunk

Screams were heard out in the pastures
and came a horizon much like ash on the hearth
Shadows moved infinitely
The sounds grew diminutively
The prelude to the rapture of the earth.

The Dead caught quickly to the masses of souls
Hailing words and weapons of demonic origin
Carrying the faces of no strangers
Those once loved threaten dangers
Of what was human, but now suffused in sin.

Lives flooded the pathways ‘tween houses
Terror coated their faces like a blinding veneer
The feeble fell sprawled
Crushed in panic by all
Those they had once cherished and trusted so dear

“The most primitive of emotions begets the bonds once made
when one would gladly **** their child to live another day.”

The hooded figure had spoken this truth to the King
In a voice so trustful, endearing, yet cold
“A miracle, for you, can be given
To save men, women, and children
But I will take the most precious of treasures you hold.”

The King gave no reply in the earnest of propositions
Yet rendered this a miracle none could pass.
“Only in exchange for a treasure,
One of your choosing- my pleasure,
But of my most precious, what could you possibly ask?”

From under the hood came an un-ethereal voice
“Your soul shall be all that I’ll need...”
With fiery sparks and a turn
The fabric had burned
Exposed his dark presence- Mephistopheles.

A deal with the darkest of Princes bodes endless misery
“Your God has forsaken you; your destiny now  lies with me.”

The King fell down to his knees in despair
For his life, his Kingdom could be spared
“You’d take my life and not my kingdom
My people must have their freedom.
For such, no misery in your hell could ever compare.”

Mephistopheles erupted with such contentment
The Kings folly- pure, innocent and bare
Without sound or sight
The King’s soul, crushed pure light
Mephistopheles disappeared in a dark wisp of air...

-End of Part III-

Screams were heard out in the pastures
and came a horizon much like ash on the hearth
Shadows moved infinitely
The sounds grew diminutively
The prelude to the rapture of the earth.

The Dead caught quickly to the masses of souls
Hailing words and weapons of demonic origin
Carrying the faces of no strangers
Those once loved threaten dangers
Of what was human, but now suffused in sin.

Lives flooded the pathways ‘tween houses
Terror coated their faces like a blinding veneer
The feeble fell sprawled
Crushed in panic by all
Those they had once cherished and trusted so dear

“The most primitive of emotions begets the bonds once made
when one would gladly **** their child to live another day.”

The hooded figure had spoken this truth to the King
In a voice so trustful, endearing, yet cold
“A miracle, for you, can be given
To save men, women, and children
But I will take the most precious of treasures you hold.”

The King gave no reply in the earnest of propositions
Yet rendered this a miracle none could pass.
“Only in exchange for a treasure,
One of your choosing- my pleasure,
But of my most precious, what could you possibly ask?”

From under the hood came an un-ethereal voice
“Your soul shall be all that I’ll need…”
With fiery sparks and a turn
The fabric had burned
Exposed his dark presence- Mephistopheles.

A deal with the darkest of Princes bodes endless misery
“Your God has forsaken you; your destiny now lies with me.”

The King fell down to his knees in despair
For his life, his Kingdom could be spared
“You’d take my life and not my kingdom
My people must have their freedom.
For such, no misery in your hell could ever compare.”

Mephistopheles erupted with such contentment
The Kings folly- pure, innocent and bare
Without sound or sight
The King’s soul, crushed pure light
Mephistopheles disappeared in a dark wisp of air…

© 2013

"Until an hour before the Devil fell..."
Yahweh and Lucifer got on so well,
God thought Archangels so beautiful,
God blessed each of you, so dutiful,
Lucifer, our light divine,
Now  fallen angel, out of time,
Evil love, Prince of Darkness,
Diablo Mephistopheles, no less,
Sad to say, Beezelbub runs Hell,
But, Yahweh and Lucifer got along so well,
"Until an hour before the devil fell...."

the galleries of independent machines
are put onto display in the gilded halls of long corridors
bleached away by
anti-
bacterial soap.
and we say that we are the universe.
and we are the ones that tell you what to do.
preachers of mephistopheles,
creatures of indetermination.
and indeterminate
origin,
the goat-footed gargoyles treat us as play-things.
and the winged seraphs as day-things.
but we know that we are night-things.
and night-things fly away.
she wrote her number in red-lipstick, hit the high-notes like a whisper,
and whispered.
she got under my skin
and she crawled around while she was in.
she bat her lashes
and bit her lip,
she tasted her painted
fingernails
as if licking her claws clean
and threatened -
to swallow me whole.

A figment of fictition
So persistent in perdition
Little distant,
Little hat trick
Lay her down upon my mattress

I spit hot glue
whether or not I ought to
It's never thought through,
never bought new
I never sought another off-tune

Sound
I'm perfectly happy with my own.
And life's an acquired taste (bittersweet trainwreck)
Just like a whiskey flavored sno-cone
So just

Relax.
Take your bags off and lean back
Discheveled chivalry,
Burning bush,
Uttered simile
Muttered quickly
In a sea of young blood and old trees

Just try and make a meek response,
recompose your shattered sconce
Redirect it all deliberately
with my newfound friend tenacity
I report a list of casualties
after a hurricane of history

Recurring dreams are haunting me
Face-to-face with Mephistopheles
Which I ponder in all honesty.
Should I fear the devil within,
even if I don't believe in him
or is it enough
that he believes in me?

Stand beside me
Stand and exhale and
Tower over me
Shadow me

Fold me in your darkest
Where no light can hit me
Speak normal
Be usual
But teeming with me

Shelter me
Not caring
and bearing
it all

Look at me between warm breaths
Amid the frightful
Swat away
Keep my gaze
Steady

In your cover
I am everything
Cosmos Mephistopheles
Cancer
Jesus reborn

"I can't do this anymore."
She said as she dropped
the razor from her hand.
The cuts on her hand were
as deep as her love for him was.
She sat there weeping all night
thinking of how she could reverse
the time and heal her wounds.
The night was as troglodytic
as her heart.
She clenched her fist tight as she
heard it whisper in her ears.
A very familiar voice but not
palatable to hear.
A voice that sounds like an elegy.
Her world spun at the speed of light
when it said it's stuck to her.
Her hands started trembling as
it was latched onto her.
Nails so long and eyes so red
she couldn't stop the horrendous
voices in her head.
As soon as the firebolt struck
the ground the wolves started
bawling, the fiendish and
diabolical sky started mourning.
All she wanted at that
time was to be free of that
unendurable and inadmissible
pain but the depression which
came in the form of Mephistopheles
did not let her empty her vessel.
As the long abominable and
atrocious night passed she was
found lying on the floor breathing
but not alive.
She was completely shattered and
broken into tiny bits but
with every tiny bit she still
loved him.
That was the night she realized
what it was like to
live with depression.

She sat next to me,
a soulless body.
She hid her face
behind the darkness.
She stretched her
hand and showed
me her scars.
She pulled her
heart out and
kept it right in
front of me.
A heart that
was black
and poisoned by
the dart of phony
love.
I looked into her
agonising eyes,
where the spark
no longer existed
She touched me
by her flaccid
fingers.
My world which
was colourful
became a caliginous
place to live in.
As soon as she
touched me, my
heart started throbbing
And my eyes started bleeding.
I could feel her unendurable
pain .
She had just come out
of a fiendish storm and
was afraid of falling again.
But yet she fell again
for a prince who
came on a white horse.
His tranquilizing words
healed her cuts but
little did she know he was
just another mephistopheles
who came to ruin her.
She thought he would never
hurt her but his actions made
deeper cuts .
She had passed her inadmissible
pain to me which ******
the soul out of my body
leaving an empty mind
and a shattered heart.
The chain had just
Started and I realized that
I was the first one who was
targeted.

Always with the barkers voice.
Don't take it personally kid,
that's just the way of the world.

Its a suckers game.
You'll never know all the rules
and Mephistopheles holds all the cards.

You're going to lose everything you love
and we're all going to die.
Step right up. Roll the dice.

Next...

HE is the ultimate omen, the satan-slayer, the real mephistopheles.
he drips into my panicked mind like rancid blood, oozing into every
nerve and crevice.

stop; i'm already breathless.

there's no way you could dance through the shadows unseen, unheard, undetected.

but still, you bypass my every defense and creep behind me,

your aura radiates disease and ******, i feel your cold breath against my neck, and red is all i see.

my mind runs rampant with the ideas of the terrors that be.

i turn to face the awful red-death, the demon that makes god's army of angels flee.

he licks his lips and pounces only at me, i turn back and count to three.

to a beginning no one has dug far enough or searched their souls long
enough
nor has been ever a man who lived as long as Moses, or caused more  doubts than Mephistopheles.
Don't get me wrong, I am religious, in a vaporous way,
I see apples as figs and floods as myths.
Reminisces cloud my atheistic thoughts. Day to day according to the sun shines
or cloudiness.
And steam rises from my breath, at times. When I feel so alone, and coldness closes around, I doubt  my doubts.
I seek God to speed healing when a loved one is in need.
I am first off, an honest hypocrite. I would sell my soul for Peace.
I see the new day, sometimes, kneel down in prayer.
My question remains as I say, Amen, for what.
And to whom?

Patience was late to my funeral

On your casual ears my voice fell with vicious volume
Bettering any necessity of childish cry
Yet behind the plastic tones I am as silent as a lamb.
Here heard confession: I’ve been least courteous
To these young years who welcomed me over their frame
With warmly bared arms, I met with fire;
Over each threshold my feet held more dirt
Held more scars, my veins ran rank with abuse,
Breath reeked from the dead dry words that spilled
Over every other girl’s neck,
Over every other girl’s lips,
A neat and fancy fiction I buried myself in
Six sick feet under their benevolent belief
Because I felt less
To nothing.

I crawled inside a hot-boxed bottle comfortably
Hidden myself away from the unmuted madness manifesting memories
That I relived each night I stared into the dark,
That I tasted on every other lie;
Here I lie.
My rudely ignorant body is hollow
At the naïve request to revel with reveries of my heart,
Yet the pull tears worse through the chasm
Than through any suffering flesh…
And I can hear
Your echoing voice
Still in kiss, it keeps me still,
Because it could save me
From myself:
You.

...of Mephistopheles

MEPHISTOPHELES. Make good use of your time! It hurries past,
But order and method make time last,
So, friend, take my advice to heart:
Hear lectures on logic for a start.
Logic will train your mind all right;
Like inquisitor's boots it will squeeze you tight,,
Your thoughts will learn to creep and crawl
And never lose their way at all,
Not get criss-crossed as now, or go
Will-o'-the-wisping to and fro!
We'll teach you that your process of thinking
Instead of being like eating and drinking,
Spontaneous, instantaneous, free,
Must proceed by one and two and three.
Our thought-machine, as I assume,
Is in fact like a master-weavers loom:
One ****** of his foot, and a thousand threads
Invisibly shift, and hither and thither
The shuttles dart - just one he treads
And a thousand strands all twine together.
In comes your philosopher and proves
It must happen by distinct logical moves:
The first is this, the second is that,
And the third and fourth then follow pat;
If you leave out one or leave out two,
Then neither three nor four can be true.
The students applaud, they all say 'just so!'-
But how to weavers they still don't know.
When scholars study a thing, they strive
To **** it first, if it's alive;
Then they have the parts and they've lost the whole,
For the link that's missing was the living soul.
Encheiresis naturae, says Chemistry now -
Moccking itself without knowing how.

MEPHISTOPHELES [with a solemn gesture].
False word and shape compel
Mind and space by this spell!
Be here, be there as well!
[They stop in astonishment and stare at each other.]

ALTMAYER. Where am I? What a wonderland.

Lucifer was my first lover,
Now I have a twisted fantasy seeping darkness into my head.

I can no longer grow brain cells but I can now grow horns.
Splitting out ot my skull like thorns from a branch.
There's dried blood dripping down the crown of forehead again.

Dancing with the devil is child's play.
He's wrapped a chain around my neck.
Belts upon my arms, ties around my legs.
I'm fully undressed and unholy.

Light the circular fire while I become my purest form.
Lay me on dirt while the embers silhouette around me.
I'm burning like amber, illuminating the nights sky.
This is a ritual, I can take it. I'm not human, I'm reborn.

Mephistopheles' forked tongue spits gasoline over pale skin.
Imp's are beating on drums as the ceremony begins.
Sacrifice me, I am the chosen one.
Beat me until I believe.
Face down in damp soil I'm a mural against the green.
The mausoleum next to me will guide my spirit where it needs to be.

Lily-livered eyes cremate excervasion into my flesh.
Taloned hands drag my body to the crypt.

Bathe me in others as unfortunate as me,
Then dress me in Ivy so those in the underworld can see:  
I'm the "Purest Form Of Innocence."
The one who was once "Me" has finally become "We."

The Archfiend tells me to kneel and I obey his every command.
Falexn eyes control me to undress myself once again.
" Filia Diaboli" He calls me as he places his hands on my head.

I feel my body ascend through the dirt I used to lay.
And when I open my fawn eyes, I'm in the real world once again.

... I think I'm pregnant to you.
I think our hearts have joined.

A poem is worth so much more in the delivery, so
I place my trust in Australia Post
and the efficacy of the clearly marked post code.

I heard that love is intoxication:
so I purchased a bottle of wine grown in South Australia
and hoped to savour just a taste of you.

There’s a chemical released in your brain when
you meet someone you love;
its dying to meet other chemicals.

But I can’t cope with that kind of expectation,
and I’m too young for equanimous adjustment.
It’s too much like needing a sedative after the *** you almost had
when you thought your girlfriend was coming to stay for the night.

Don’t think I’m bemoaning the fact that you’re not coming to stay for the night,
you live on the other side of the continent.
I accept the disparity of our geography.
I accept the arterial nature of the freeway system in human relationship
after all, we’ve all been told where roads lead.

Did you know that if your name was translated in Spanish?
I'd be interpreted as a conquistador with no hope in the tropics.
And did you know that I’ve always wanted to wear a superman suit and
keep nothing out but steady rainfall?
If you think about it, this is a potent philosophy.
  
Mephistopheles considered certain questions and theorems.
He found the intrusion of chaos theory and the disruption to the order of the work ethic unthinkable.
He found the mature and calculated response simple:
he told the ******* to articulate and pontificate elsewhere.
So please don't get any ideas.

This brings me back to my remaining piece of news:
Regardless of the fact that it’s medically impossible
I think I'm pregnant to you.

Please write soon.



MChallis © 2015

Clink clink clink! Out thou comest little genie
Broken is mine heart, not one time but three
So grant me three a wish and may that be
Fly aloft and take these ****** tears with thee


Mine keen eyes captured by the hands of doom
guts wrenched in light of mephistopheles' gloom
A dark solo rider in hue of a hero assumed
Beguiled the young heart is now encaged, entombed

Lo! Take the glass heart and travel afar
Drop it where hungry vultures and eagles are
Pour my light into his blackness like a shining star
Pour it to the end of his every remaining cigar

seek me then in the lands of madness within
Resting as the corpse bride I always have been

Reclaim that which was never taken away.
Seek out that which you have hidden.
Take the spear and drive it deep.

As within
So without
As above
So below

Understand this before all else:
What is right for your soul
Bears little resemblance
To what you expect.

To know thyself is the call
And the paradox.
By seeking the truth of thyself,
You discover the truth of others.

One must ****** your Minotaur,
And kiss Mephistopheles in his rage,
In order to assume your Theseus,
And fill your Faust with purpose.

I'd continue in the same vein if I weren't drunk and tired and simply out of patience. Essentially what I'm saying in a poor imitation of alchemical allegory is that the worlds outside of ourselves are bound to the worlds within.

My premiere deduction was, he deceived with each
Word, that cold-hearted viper, with poisonous zeal
Looking sidelong to observe the mechanics of his deed
On my life, and lips that slander scarce fit to conceal
A forked tongue behind fangs no less infamous or real
Than the impish minions which follow Mephistopheles.

What else might he be primed to strike with his cadre?
What, barring to ambush with his lies, or set upon any
Traveler who  may take notice to his presence that day
Upon the deserted road? I gathered what evil cackle
Would uproar, which staff  shall pen my last will,
For entertainment in the arenose, unclean witch's cave.

6 months ago I fell in love with you. I don't know why or how but I did.
I was the shinny girl with a lot of fake friends, hurt by the world but trying to survive with a lot of scars on her arms.
You were the quiet boy, with few friends, an incredible sense of humour and a strange past. You were this boy who bullied one of my best friends until her suicide attempt. Everyone was telling me that you were cruel and nobody truly loved you. But despise what every body was saying, I fell in love with you.

I fell in love with your changing eyes, sometimes green, sometimes blue, often dark.
I fell in love with your skinny face, the way your cheekbones were trying to pierce your white skin.
I fell in love with your body, the way you walk and are.
I fell in love with the way you sometimes care about me, the way you saw my scars and looked me in the eyes with concern.
I fell in love with every little things about you. You were not perfect but you were what I loved, and you are always in my brain.
And now that my heart is attached to you, I see you slipping away from me. That's sad.