Poverty
Blurred Pigments of Red and blue
Bring to mind the police
Responding to our crises
Aptly and alert
Though upon arrival
It’s pure brutality…
They oppress and beat
Abuse and misuse
Break our spirits
Lowering us deeper into this
Depression…
No… it’s and economic Recession…
In which inequalities are abound
For the rich stay rich
While the poor fall hungry
And We…
The…
People….
Fall beyond Poverty…
Straight Through The misguided…
Rage of the government…
And Deeper than just a simple
Economic Inequality…

We’ve
Reached
The
Poverty Stricken
Greatest Recession….
Known As
A Secondary Great Depression….

Hey, you got your
freedom of religion
in my
freedom of speech!

Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy.


Tragedy, as it was antiently compos’d, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight,
stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for
so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us’d against
melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.
Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch
and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse.  The Apostle Paul himself thought it not
unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy
Scripture, I Cor. 15. 33. and Paraeus commenting on the
Revelation, divides the whole Book as a Tragedy, into Acts
distinguisht each by a Chorus of Heavenly Harpings and Song
between.  Heretofore Men in highest dignity have labour’d not a
little to be thought able to compose a Tragedy.  Of that honour
Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious, then before of his
attaining to the Tyranny. Augustus Caesar also had begun his
Ajax, but unable to please his own judgment with what he had
begun. left it unfinisht.  Seneca the Philosopher is by some thought
the Author of those Tragedies (at lest the best of them) that go
under that name.  Gregory Nazianzen a Father of the Church,
thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a
Tragedy which he entitl’d, Christ suffering. This is mention’d to
vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which
in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common
Interludes; hap’ning through the Poets error of intermixing Comic
stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and
****** persons, which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd; and
brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratifie the people. And
though antient Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in
case of self defence, or explanation, that which Martial calls an
Epistle; in behalf of this Tragedy coming forth after the antient
manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus
much before-hand may be Epistl’d; that Chorus is here introduc’d
after the Greek manner, not antient only but modern, and still in
use among the Italians. In the modelling therefore of this Poem
with good reason, the Antients and Italians are rather follow’d, as
of much more authority and fame. The measure of Verse us’d in
the Chorus is of all sorts, call’d by the Greeks Monostrophic, or
rather Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, Antistrophe
or Epod, which were a kind of Stanza’s fram’d only for the Music,
then us’d with the Chorus that sung; not essential to the Poem, and
therefore not material; or being divided into Stanza’s or Pauses
they may be call’d Allaeostropha.  Division into Act and Scene
referring chiefly to the Stage (to which this work never was
intended) is here omitted.

It suffices if the whole Drama be found not produc’t beyond the
fift Act, of the style and uniformitie, and that commonly call’d the
Plot, whether intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but such
oeconomy, or disposition of the fable as may stand best with
verisimilitude and decorum; they only will best judge who are not
unacquainted with Aeschulus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three
Tragic Poets unequall’d yet by any, and the best rule to all who
endeavour to write Tragedy. The circumscription of time wherein
the whole Drama begins and ends, is according to antient rule, and
best example, within the space of 24 hours.



The ARGUMENT.


Samson made Captive, Blind, and now in the Prison at Gaza, there
to labour as in a common work-house, on a Festival day, in the
general cessation from labour, comes forth into the open Air, to a
place nigh, somewhat retir’d there to sit a while and bemoan his
condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain
friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek
to comfort him what they can ; then by his old Father Manoa, who
endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his
liberty by ransom; lastly, that this Feast was proclaim’d by the
Philistins as a day of Thanksgiving for thir deliverance from the
hands of Samson, which yet more troubles him.  Manoa then
departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philistian Lords for
Samson’s redemption; who in the mean while is visited by other
persons; and lastly by a publick Officer to require coming to the
Feast before the Lords and People, to play or shew his strength in
thir presence; he at first refuses, dismissing the publick officer with
absolute denyal to come; at length perswaded inwardly that this
was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the
second time with great threatnings to fetch him; the Chorus yet
remaining on the place, Manoa returns full of joyful hope, to
procure e’re long his Sons deliverance: in the midst of which
discourse an Ebrew comes in haste confusedly at first; and
afterward more distinctly relating the Catastrophe, what Samson
had done to the Philistins, and by accident to himself; wherewith
the Tragedy ends.


The Persons

Samson.
Manoa the father of Samson.
Dalila his wife.
Harapha of Gath.
Publick Officer.
Messenger.
Chorus of Danites


The Scene before the Prison in Gaza.

Sam:  A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of Sun or shade,
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toyl,
Daily in the common Prison else enjoyn’d me,
Where I a Prisoner chain’d, scarce freely draw
The air imprison’d also, close and damp,
Unwholsom draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of Heav’n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
This day a solemn Feast the people hold
To Dagon thir Sea-Idol, and forbid
Laborious works, unwillingly this rest
Thir Superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of Hornets arm’d, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an Angel, who at last in sight
Of both my Parents all in flames ascended
From off the Altar, where an Off’ring burn’d,
As in a fiery column charioting
His Godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit reveal’d to Abraham’s race?
Why was my breeding order’d and prescrib’d
As of a person separate to God,
Design’d for great exploits; if I must dye
Betray’d, Captiv’d, and both my Eyes put out,
Made of my Enemies the scorn and gaze;
To grind in Brazen Fetters under task
With this Heav’n-gifted strength? O glorious strength
Put to the labour of a Beast, debas’t
Lower then bondslave! Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke;
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine Prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfilld but through mine own default,
Whom have I to complain of but my self?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodg’d, how easily bereft me,
Under the Seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it
O’recome with importunity and tears.
O impotence of mind, in body strong!
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensom,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest suttleties, not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when he gave me strength, to shew withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my Hair.
But peace, I must not quarrel with the will
Of highest dispensation, which herein
Happ’ly had ends above my reach to know:
Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
And proves the sourse of all my miseries;
So many, and so huge, that each apart
Would ask a life to wail, but chief of all,
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains,
Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age!
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull’d, which might in part my grief have eas’d,
Inferiour to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos’d
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more then half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th’ eye confin’d?
So obvious and so easie to be quench’t,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus’d,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exil’d from light;
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but O yet more miserable!
My self, my Sepulcher, a moving Grave,
Buried, yet not exempt
By priviledge of death and burial
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
But who are these? for with joint pace I hear
The tread of many feet stearing this way;
Perhaps my enemies who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Thir daily practice to afflict me more.

Chor:  This, this is he; softly a while,
Let us not break in upon him;
O change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelessly diffus’d,
With languish’t head unpropt,
As one past hope, abandon’d
And by himself given over;
In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O’re worn and soild;
Or do my eyes misrepresent?  Can this be hee,
That Heroic, that Renown’d,
Irresistible Samson? whom unarm’d
No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast could withstand;
Who tore the Lion, as the Lion tears the Kid,
Ran on embattelld Armies clad in Iron,
And weaponless himself,
Made Arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer’d Cuirass,
Chalybean temper’d steel, and frock of mail
Adamantean Proof;
But safest he who stood aloof,
When insupportably his foot advanc’t,
In scorn of thir proud arms and warlike tools,
Spurn’d them to death by Troops.  The bold Ascalonite
Fled from his Lion ramp, old Warriors turn’d
Thir plated backs under his heel;
Or grovling soild thir crested helmets in the dust.
Then with what trivial weapon came to Hand,
The Jaw of a dead ***, his sword of bone,
A thousand fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestin
In Ramath-lechi famous to this day:
Then by main force pull’d up, and on his shoulders bore
The Gates of Azza, Post, and massie Bar
Up to the Hill by Hebron, seat of Giants old,
No journey of a Sabbath day, and loaded so;
Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up Heav’n.
Which shall I first bewail,
Thy ******* or lost Sight,
Prison within Prison
Inseparably dark?
Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!)
The Dungeon of thy self; thy Soul
(Which Men enjoying sight oft without cause complain)
Imprison’d now indeed,
In real darkness of the body dwells,
Shut up from outward light
To incorporate with gloomy night;
For inward light alas
Puts forth no visual beam.
O mirror of our fickle state,
Since man on earth unparallel’d!
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall’n.
For him I reckon not in high estate
Whom long descent of birth
Or the sphear of fortune raises;
But thee whose strength, while vertue was her mate
Might have subdu’d the Earth,
Universally crown’d with highest praises.

Sam:  I hear the sound of words, thir sense the air
Dissolves unjointed e’re it reach my ear.

Chor:  Hee speaks, let us draw nigh.  Matchless in might,
The glory late of Israel, now the grief;
We come thy friends and neighbours not unknown
From Eshtaol and Zora’s fruitful Vale
To visit or bewail thee, or if better,
Counsel or Consolation we may bring,
Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to swage
The tumors of a troubl’d mind,
And are as Balm to fester’d wounds.

Sam:  Your coming, Friends, revives me, for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counterfeit a coin they are who friends
Bear in their Superscription (of the most
I would be understood) in prosperous days
They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head
Not to be found, though sought.  Wee see, O friends.
How many evils have enclos’d me round;
Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me,
Blindness, for had I sight, confus’d with shame,
How could I once look up, or heave the head,
Who like a foolish Pilot have shipwrack’t,
My Vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigg’d; and for a word, a tear,
Fool, have divulg’d the secret gift of God
To a deceitful Woman : tell me Friends,
Am I not sung and proverbd for a Fool
In every street, do they not say, how well
Are come upon him his deserts? yet why?
Immeasurable strength they might behold
In me, of wisdom nothing more then mean;
This with the other should, at least, have paird,
These two proportiond ill drove me transverse.

Chor:  Tax not divine disposal, wisest Men
Have err’d, and by bad Women been deceiv’d;
And shall again, pretend they ne’re so wise.
Deject not then so overmuch thy self,
Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides;
Yet truth to say, I oft have heard men wonder
Why thou shouldst wed Philistian women rather
Then of thine own Tribe fairer, or as fair,
At least of thy own Nation, and as noble.

Sam:  The first I saw at Timna, and she pleas’d
Mee, not my Parents, that I sought to wed,
The daughter of an Infidel: they knew not
That what I motion’d was of God; I knew
From intimate impulse, and therefore urg’d
The Marriage on; that by occasion hence
I might begin Israel’s Deliverance,
The work to which I was divinely call’d;
She proving false, the next I took to Wife
(O that I never had! fond wish too late)
Was in the Vale of Sorec, Dalila,
That specious Monster, my accomplisht snare.
I thought it lawful from my former act,
And the same end; still watching to oppress
Israel’s oppressours: of what now I suffer
She was not the prime cause, but I my self,
Who vanquisht with a peal of words (O weakness!)
Gave up my fort of silence to a Woman.

Chor:  In seeking just occasion to provoke
The Philistine, thy Countries Enemy,
Thou never wast remiss, I hear thee witness:
Yet Israel still serves with all his Sons.

Sam:  That fault I take not on me, but transfer
On Israel’s Governours, and Heads of Tribes,
Who seeing those great acts which God had done
Singly by me against their Conquerours
Acknowledg’d not, or not at all consider’d
Deliverance offerd : I on th’ other side
Us’d no ambition to commend my deeds,
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the dooer;
But they persisted deaf, and would not seem
To count them things worth notice, till at length
Thir Lords the Philistines with gather’d powers
Enterd Judea seeking mee, who then
Safe to the rock of Etham was retir’d,
Not flying, but fore-casting in what place
To set upon them, what advantag’d best;
Mean while the men of Judah to prevent
The harrass of thir Land, beset me round;
I willingly on some conditions came
Into thir hands, and they as gladly yield me
To the uncircumcis’d a welcom prey,
Bound with two cords; but cords to me were threds
Toucht with the flame: on thi

Blood means nothing
Unless it's staining the streets
Family has no merit
When they don't even See me

You want me to be passive?
And let them spew racist hate?
And all that "gendered" *******?
You can't stop me, too late

**** the systems that oppress us
These prisons are stealing lives
Locking up innocent people
It's a form of modern genocide

We are all human
But our brothers are killed by police
And our sisters killed for their gender identity
But you'd rather look the other way
And defend hateful "free speech"

I am aware of my privilege
And I will not stay silent
You turn your eyes away from police brutality
But try to preach anti-violence

Our country is run by the white and the blue
While the red is the blood of its people
We need to look up at reality
And stop focusing on the steeples

Your hopes and your prayers
Do not end the violence
Instead they teach hate
And oppressive silence

Salto Angel dances an Aqua-Skirt
Such Fashion pleased the Tourists below
How else can the Latin earn your Fervour
But surpass your Record of height and snow?
Funny, how her Majesty can suppress
Even more when viewing up from this Point
Like a Crone who often tries to oppress
A Revolt which a Priest failed to Anoint
And lowering my Camera, I see
The many Prizes I did Hit-and-Miss
But she roared with showers raining gently
And, enough! They saw Rainbows turn to bliss.
So I sat on a Rock to watch and live
Hoping my Partner would rise to forgive.

To put our current legal situation into context you have to ask one basic question; what is law? Is law as we have been lead to believe, the codification of statutes defining what is illegal or not? Or is there some inherent property of moral righteousness that must exist for that law to have force?

I will argue that there is a moral component of law that must be present to make the system of law work. I am, of course, aware that there are many places that laws are passed that have no moral basis at all. There are dictatorships around the world that oppress their peoples and use their codified statutes to imprison and **** any who dissent.

The ultimate example of this is was the **** Germany government who made it legal to **** Jews. It was not only legal, but a system of laws was implemented to guide their extermination. But those laws, even though written out with penalties for those who did not follow them by the legislature, were illegal.

It is a basic component of the human being to know right from wrong. It is the reason that human beings set up laws in the first place. They are set up to make sure that innocents are not victimized by the predacious in our societies. In virtually every place that a human society exists, whether on a group, tribal or civilization level, there are always laws that govern behavior. Even those that break the laws have a sense of righteousness. In prison populations, if the prisoners feel that they are being treated in a fair and just manner they will comply with the rules and follow the system. Take away that feeling of just and fair treatment and prison riots and mayhem ensues. The prisoners realize that they have broken the law and when treated humanely will accept their punishment for the most part. The prisoners know that they have committed a wrong and they knew the possible penalty beforehand and knew what they risked. If torture, mal-treatment and other injuries are added to the punishment then a situation of self-righteousness is set up. The only way to control a prison population under those circumstances is with solitary confinement and complete isolation; if left to exist within prison society it would quickly conflagrate into confrontation.

In places where law exists without any moral authority there is always rebellion brewing just under the surface of society. The dictators and bureaucracies of these societies must rule with an iron fist because they know that one moment of slackness will have them swept from power and executed or exiled. Every single individual who is subject to these laws knows that they are illegal. How can they be illegal if they are written into law you might ask; Is that not the definition of law?

My argument is that it is the moral component of the law that is essential for it to work. It has nothing to with writing a statute and everything to do with human nature. We are after all the ones who create the laws, then write them and in the end follow them. It is at the very core of our nature to organize and codify law because we are innately social by nature and always end up forming some type of society that must have rules. It is also our own feeling of self-righteousness that makes us create the laws.

Certain things are innately wrong and one person should not be able to do this or that to another, and that is the basic creator of law. Laws don’t start out as regulations to govern society. They start out as basic rules of moral behavior; don’t steal from those in our community, don’t **** anyone and don’t try to take my wife. It is this same sense of self-righteousness that drives us to rebel when we know that a law is being applied without any righteous basis.

Take traffic laws for an example. Someone is driving down the highway when they suddenly see blue lights in the rearview. They were oblivious to their speed, lost in thought, and look down at the speedometer and see that they are doing 70 M.P.H. When the cop walks up and gives them a speeding ticket for doing 70 M.P.H. in a 50 M.P.H zone, there is little room for self-righteousness. Most people knowing that they broke the law, and one enacted for public safety, will accept the ticket and pay it without even showing up in court. The next example is the opposite.

Someone is rolling down the highway and the only difference in the scenario is that when they look down they see that they are only doing 45 M.P.H. They continue on for a while, waiting for the cop to go around them. When they eventually pull over, part of it is curiosity as to why he would be stopping them. In this case when a 70 M.P.H. ticket is handed out the reaction is going to be entirely different. That person will go to court. In addition to going to court, if not resolved there, they will spend large amounts of time and money to right the injustice. They will actually spend time and money far out of proportion to the actual injustice that happened because they are self-righteous.

Now imagine that the law was written like this: If you are driving down the highway you can be pulled over and issued a speeding ticket at any time no matter what your speed was. That is the point where the law goes against human nature. People would naturally begin to rebel against it because of its inherent injustice. In the second case it is not only that person’s right to rebel against the law, but also their moral obligation. They have a moral obligation to rebel because they should be seeking to re-establish moral law. If they live in human society then moral law, compatible with human nature should be the rule. If this is not the case, then they are being set up to have very bad things happen.

The Jews in **** Germany also had a moral obligation to fight and for the most part they did not (With the notable and heroic exception of the Warsaw ghetto and a few others) and were led to their slaughter. They had a moral obligation not just to themselves, but to their fellow Jews and compatriots. They were obligated to save their children, their mothers and fathers and other humans and in the end, for the most part did not.

Instead they followed the laws of **** Germany. (Just as the German soldiers at the Nuremberg trials did) They agreed to be registered because to not do so would be breaking the law. They showed up in groups to be transported away because to not do so would be breaking the law. They gave up their goods and businesses and money because not to do so would be breaking the law. There were, of course, severe penalties for breaking the law such as being imprisoned or just disappearing into the night and that drove most to comply.

I know that faith also played a part for many and I am not judging their actions or inaction. I am simply stating the results of what happened by their following the law and putting forward the fact that we are all morally obligated to act when law becomes illegal or immoral.

When law has lost its moral authority and becomes nothing more than something punitive to arbitrarily punish enemies then it is not true law; or at least not true to human nature , by which we all act. In that case all the law becomes is a fear of retribution. No one cares if they break the law for they feel no guilt about doing so and we humans, for the most part, are moral beings. Personally I don’t rob people because it is against the law. I don’t rob people because of the fact that it is morally wrong and I have no desire to violently take from another to gain wealth. I will die before I take the sustenance of another to live.

Once the moral component of law is removed only fear of punishment remains. If someone follows the law it is only because they don’t want to be fined or imprisoned; It I not because they have a moral imperative. But fear only goes so far; when the law becomes illegal its moral authority is transferred to those against whom it is used. They now have righteousness on their side and righteousness has a way of cancelling out fear.

Counter-intuitively, the more injustice that is piled on the more it is met with resistance. The IRA is an excellent example. By the 1960’s their membership was flagging and their armed struggle against the British was at very low ebb. That all changed on ****** Sunday when British troops opened fire into a crowd of demonstrators and killed and wounded a number of them. Instead of being frightened by this, they were outraged and active resistance against them doubled. A vicious cycle was started as the British escalated their actions in response to the increase in attacks and therefore caused even more.

The result of the British crackdown was the highest membership in the IRA in history and the start of a real shooting war. The level of violence escalated to a point never seen before and eventually drove the Brits to sue for peace. The danger of enrolling in the outlawed organization was more than offset by the sense of self-righteous outrage that was generated by the deaths and military lock down of entire neighborhoods. When one joined the IRA it was not a matter of if you would die or be imprisoned, but rather when. Still, even knowing what the outcome would be the ranks of the IRA swelled to enormous numbers. When the British military began a covert assassination program to **** suspected IRA members and affiliates, instead of instilling fear it just added to the sense of outrage and drove more to join and fight.

It was the (Legal) injustice of what was being done that gave the moral righteousness to the IRA and drove them to war. I bring this all up because we are now, in our own society, entering an era of legal lawlessness. We will be forced to make choices about how we respond when confronted with these laws. From the patriot act to the NSA spying, the NDAA authorization of indefinite detention, the IRS and the DOJ it is becoming clear that we are living in an increasingly lawless society.

The lawlessness is not on the part of the people, but rather on the part of those writing the law. The irony is that as the laws become more illegitimate the numbers of them are increasing exponentially. There are already so many federal laws on the books that at any given time any given individual is guilty of a crime. We have now become beholden to the very institutions that are supposed to be serving us as a society. Instead of serving us, the people, they now serve the bureaucracy instead. The bureaucracy and the institutions thereof have become the center of law giving rather than we as citizens. The law, rather than protecting us has become an instrument to protect the bureaucracy and punish those who disagree with it.

We have come to the point where our laws are becoming as corrupt as any given banana republic and if we do not actually want to become one, then we need to make a stand and say enough is enough. I am sure that while I have been writing this that I have committed at least three crimes; either by what I have written or done or thought or possibly what type of lighting I used. Do I care? No not at all. My sense of self- righteous indignation has grown to the point that I have no fear. I have no fear of death or imprisonment. The level of outrage has grown in me to the point that I will go to war.

Will they put me in prison? Go ahead lock me up with a captive audience and let me speak the truth to them; I will leave with an army of self-righteous individuals. Of course the speaking of this truth is illegal in prison, but at this point what is law? We all have hard choices coming up in the future; choices that could affect the rest of our lives and need to decide how to act. In the end how we act is going to be influenced by how the legal system acts. Let me end this with a question: If you receive a letter from the IRS informing you that you are subject to an audit, is your hard drive going to crash? I know that mine is.

Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,—
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse of passion—youth’s first fiery glow,—
Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:
Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,
Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see!

Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale,
Like water bubbling from a silver jar,
So soft she sings the envious moon is pale,
That high in heaven she is hung so far
She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,—
Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring moon.

White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,
The fallen snow of petals where the breeze
Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam
Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these
Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?
Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store.

For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown
Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour
For wasted days of youth to make atone
By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never,
Hearken they now to either good or ill,
But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will.

They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease,
Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine,
They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees
Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine,
Mourning the old glad days before they knew
What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do.

And far beneath the brazen floor they see
Like swarming flies the crowd of little men,
The bustle of small lives, then wearily
Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again
Kissing each others’ mouths, and mix more deep
The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep.

There all day long the golden-vestured sun,
Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch ablaze,
And, when the gaudy web of noon is spun
By its twelve maidens, through the crimson haze
Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon,
And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon.

There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead,
Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust
Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede
Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must,
His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare
The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air.

There in the green heart of some garden close
Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side,
Her warm soft body like the briar rose
Which would be white yet blushes at its pride,
Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis
Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss.

There never does that dreary north-wind blow
Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare,
Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow,
Nor ever doth the red-toothed lightning dare
To wake them in the silver-fretted night
When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight.

Alas! they know the far Lethaean spring,
The violet-hidden waters well they know,
Where one whose feet with tired wandering
Are faint and broken may take heart and go,
And from those dark depths cool and crystalline
Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne.

But we oppress our natures, God or Fate
Is our enemy, we starve and feed
On vain repentance—O we are born too late!
What balm for us in bruised poppy seed
Who crowd into one finite pulse of time
The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime.

O we are wearied of this sense of guilt,
Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair,
Wearied of every temple we have built,
Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer,
For man is weak; God sleeps:  and heaven is high:
One fiery-coloured moment:  one great love; and lo! we die.

Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole
Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand,
No little coin of bronze can bring the soul
Over Death’s river to the sunless land,
Victim and wine and vow are all in vain,
The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again.

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerveless germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we ****.

From lower cells of waking life we pass
To full perfection; thus the world grows old:
We who are godlike now were once a mass
Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold,
Unsentient or of joy or misery,
And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea.

This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn
Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil,
Ay! and those argent ******* of thine will turn
To water-lilies; the brown fields men till
Will be more fruitful for our love to-night,
Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death’s despite.

The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell,
The man’s last passion, and the last red spear
That from the lily leaps, the asphodel
Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear
Of too much beauty, and the timid shame
Of the young bridegroom at his lover’s eyes,—these with the same

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood,
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good.

So when men bury us beneath the yew
Thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be,
And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew,
And when the white narcissus wantonly
Kisses the wind its playmate some faint joy
Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy.

And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain
In some sweet flower we will feel the sun,
And from the linnet’s throat will sing again,
And as two gorgeous-mailed snakes will run
Over our graves, or as two tigers creep
Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep

And give them battle!  How my heart leaps up
To think of that grand living after death
In beast and bird and flower, when this cup,
Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath,
And with the pale leaves of some autumn day
The soul earth’s earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey.

O think of it!  We shall inform ourselves
Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun,
The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves
That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn
Upon the meadows, shall not be more near
Than you and I to nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear

The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow,
And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun
On sunless days in winter, we shall know
By whom the silver gossamer is spun,
Who paints the diapered fritillaries,
On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows
If yonder daffodil had lured the bee
Into its gilded womb, or any rose
Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!
Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring,
But for the lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’ lips that sing.

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature’s heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure!  We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart; the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality.

You are my
Ensorcelled Elysium,
You are my
Eden Dream.

You cascade
Upon my Dreamscape,
Enshrine my slumber in
A flowered gale of aromatic petals
That envelop me, beckon me
To herald the rebirth
Of Days of Yore.

You vein
The Glistening Glade of Memories
With your
Brooks of Aqueous Emerald.

Tis' the
Phantasmagoric Plane
Where still
My wayworn spirit wanders, wearily
In search of the magic
To enfetter
The Hands of Fate
(For they conspire against us).

Swifter than your descent
Into my soul
(Five seconds still and flat)
By
The nexus of your affections,
You evanesced
Like vapor,
Yet
I shall not concede to
The Malevolent Matriarch of Destiny.

For you
O, Breath of Life,
Forsook me not
So I sublime all stains
Tarnishing my flesh
By cries to The Ethereal.

At midday
Awaiting the Twilight
I long for
The birth of The Womb of Aether’s
Progeny,
Starlit winds.

I muse
Swimmingly in Seas of Reminiscence,
Banished from that Blackened Bastion
Of Shadowed Heavens,
For when darkness shrouds
My dreams can be seen
Draping the skies.

I then fathom,
You must not be far off,
Wishing,
Hoping,
Believing
That perhaps
You too
Wonder upon stars
Longing to find that one
That entwines us anew.

You shall alight,
Upon me once more
As
August Sun’s Nimbus
(If only for a moment)
Is thwarted
By
Ebony Miasma
That drenches Cimmerian skies.

In search
Of Ardor’s Light abiding in
The Sylvan Shrine of Your Numinous Eyes
I plead that
The Crag oppress
The Coals of Tribulation,
Until my anguish is
A Diamond Heart.

The pilgrimage
I must bear,
Must be traveled by
The Adamantine alone.

Where have you gone,
Tree of Life?
Why have you withered,
Yggdrasil?

Do I possess
The Eradia of Souls,
By which you shall
Effloresce?

I would halt the cogs of time,
Relinquish my liberty,
To slumber for eternity
In crystal stasis
By your side.

Even in that crystalline quietude,
I would be eminent,
I would be exalted,
I would be ennobled,
In the knowingness that
Your
Stalwart Heart
Radiates
Just beside me.

I exhale Empyrean Winds
When rapt in reverie,
Yearning to be
Captive to your devotion,
Yours alone.

The Bliss of Your Most Holy Kiss
Would signet me
With the
Bounty of Your Name
Burnishing the skin
On my lips.

Though ephemeral,
Your presence divined,
Your presence
Was my anointing.

To be solaced
By the astral resonance emitted
By your touch
Sent the
Pulse of Nirvana
Surging, rippling,
Like a kaleidoscope tide,
Down my spine

You are
The Waters of Vitality
That floweth from
The Creeks of Eden,

You have been
Poured upon my palate
From the
Goblet of Redemption
That I may drinketh
Of
Supernal immortality.

When once again we meet,
Perhaps the tears you summoned
From my spirit
By your
Stirring caress
Shall have absolved me
Of the pangs
In loving a man
(And man alone).

Perhaps then,
The sentiments
I pine to profess,
Will resound.

A melody
Sung in legato,
A  mellifluous melisma,
Flawlessly delineated
And
Intonation in deiform
Or perhaps,
Flowering fioritura
Lacing airwaves,
By the Empress Coloratura.

Perhaps then, piety
Betwixt you and I,
Will waft the air
And I might then,
Permit my quaking body
To succumb to
You alone.

Until that morn,
I shall be vigilant,
Counting the Dawns,
Counting the Twilights,
Until
I can gaze
Into your forested eyes
If even for but a moment.

For even but a moment
Spent with you,
Will bleed a nostalgia
Across my mind's sky,
Painting clouds crimson with passion,
And
That I shall revere,
And
That shall last
And last
And,
Last… And
Last.

O, it will last,
To Elysian Infinity.

∞
            I am a vestige,
               But I shall live once more,
                  In the light of memories
                       That blossom, are perennial,
                           And imbibe the dazed glory of the past
                       Until the past is vanquished
                 By a future that is fragrant
             With the mist of romance
          And eclipses the simulacrum,
       A fictitious sun of the infernal masquerade,
    The antithesis of the truest holy,
Then, rapture of life shall mystify no longer,
For the Numen of Truth,
  Shall cleanse creation without a drop of façade,
      His Providence shall emancipate the hollow,
             The Death of Dreams shall writhe
               In everlasting abeyance,
                 Absolving our wayward spirits,
                  The Winds of Change,
                  The Scourge of Pain,
               And
          The Loveless Wraiths
        That haunted our husks
      Shall be transcended for aeons,
  And tribulation made distant, made nebulous
As the Genesis of Time and Space itself
  For we embark on an exodus,
     Beseeching salvation to redeem us
        When the Requiem of Iniquity
           Is triumphed by everlasting cadence.

Be Valiant,
                 Be Sapient,
                             Be Love
                                       And
                                          By this
                                                You shall conquer the world
                                                           ∞

The world's a bubble; and the life of man less than a span.
In his conception wretched; from the womb so to the tomb:
Curst from the cradle, and brought up to years, with cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
Yet, since with sorrow here we live oppress'd, what life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools to dandle fools:
The rural parts are turn'd into a den of savage men:
And where's a city from all vice so free,
But may be term'd the worst of all the three?

Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed, or pains his head:
Those that live single, take it for a curse, or do things worse:
Some would have children; those that have them none; or wish them gone.
What is it then to have no wife, but single thralldom or a double strife?
Our own affections still at home to please, is a disease:
To cross the sea to any foreign soil, perils and toil:
Wars with their noise affright us: when they cease,
We are worse in peace:
What then remains, but that we still should cry,
Not to be born, or being born, to die.

You live with eyes closed
Walk with an arrogant stride
You keep your hands clean
And your nose held high
There's a whole world screaming
But you just walk on by
And ignore the world's trouble
The burdens it bares
Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

There's racism
And sexism all over the globe
Poverty, human trafficking
And still your shoulder is cold
Drug cartels, corrupt politicians
Murderous rapists without any souls
And you're just as guilty if I may be so bold
You just sit there and stare
Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

You're busy chasing the American dream
A glorious promise riches and liberty
But the hand that feeds and you wanna shake is giving the bird to you
While it taxes our rights and confiscates our freedom of speech
And you take it like a ******* gimp
As it keeps our inspiration and aspirations out of reach
You should stand up and fight for what's yours
And I urge you to grow a pair
Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

You have faith in the higher-ups
In our country, in God we trust
It's all a bust
You must protect your privileges
And help in our progression
Equality for and freedom
But you chose instead to be ignorant
And see a society and not a civilization

       -Tommy Johnson
Get a higher education
Go to school
Get a degree in something
No, don't be a fool
Milk the cash cow
Be a work mule
To find a job even with your doctorate
To find employment, is something rare

       -Tommy Johnson

But you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

Terrorists instill a sense of fear
So we police the world
Oppress and occupy
Bullets, bloodshed and grenades are hurled
And back home we outsource
As history unfurls
A time of economic recession
And unjust warfare

And of course you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

They tricked, murdered and ***** the natives
For all this land
You can say "you wouldn't be here if they didn't"
Well, I feel guilty for living here because they betrayed their fellow man
Then they had those of darker skin as slaves
The decision to free them caused both sides to **** each other
And in the end the chose to segregate
Tell me the equality in that there

Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

People call each other *******,
*******, spics, chinks they say
A world that loves you if you got social status
But chastise you if your gay
But it's gotten so much better
Looking back on yesterday
But you haven't helped, you just go along
You're views are still parochial, and I'm giving you a disgruntled glare

Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care


You see no beauty in this world
It's like your not even a part of it
You have no idea whats going on around you
You only look out for yourself
You contribute nothing
No ideas
No creations
No light

You just leave the rest of us in darkness
To be destroyed by corruption, hatred, misunderstanding and doubt
While you become just another pawn
Another cog
Another customer
To be accounted for
You are just nameless number
People like you are the reason change takes so long
Open your eyes!

Apollo’s wrath to man the dreadful spring
Of ills innum’rous, tuneful goddess, sing!
Thou who did’st first th’ ideal pencil give,
And taught’st the painter in his works to live,
Inspire with glowing energy of thought,
What Wilson painted, and what Ovid wrote.
Muse! lend thy aid, nor let me sue in vain,
Tho’ last and meanest of the rhyming train!
O guide my pen in lofty strains to show
The Phrygian queen, all beautiful in woe.
  ’Twas where Maeonia spreads her wide domain
Niobe dwelt, and held her potent reign:
See in her hand the regal sceptre shine,
The wealthy heir of Tantalus divine,
He most distinguish’d by Dodonean Jove,
To approach the tables of the gods above:
Her grandsire Atlas, who with mighty pains
Th’ ethereal axis on his neck sustains:
Her other grandsire on the throne on high
Rolls the loud-pealing thunder thro’ the sky.
  Her spouse, Amphion, who from Jove too springs,
Divinely taught to sweep the sounding strings.
  Seven sprightly sons the royal bed adorn,
Seven daughters beauteous as the op’ning morn,
As when Aurora fills the ravish’d sight,
And decks the orient realms with rosy light
From their bright eyes the living splendors play,
Nor can beholders bear the flashing ray.
  Wherever, Niobe, thou turn’st thine eyes,
New beauties kindle, and new joys arise!
But thou had’st far the happier mother prov’d,
If this fair offspring had been less belov’d:
What if their charms exceed Aurora’s teint.
No words could tell them, and no pencil paint,
Thy love too vehement hastens to destroy
Each blooming maid, and each celestial boy.
  Now Manto comes, endu’d with mighty skill,
The past to explore, the future to reveal.
Thro’ Thebes’ wide streets Tiresia’s daughter came,
Divine Latona’s mandate to proclaim:
The Theban maids to hear the orders ran,
When thus Maeonia’s prophetess began:
  “Go, Thebans! great Latona’s will obey,
“And pious tribute at her altars pay:
“With rights divine, the goddess be implor’d,
“Nor be her sacred offspring unador’d.”
Thus Manto spoke.  The Theban maids obey,
And pious tribute to the goddess pay.
The rich perfumes ascend in waving spires,
And altars blaze with consecrated fires;
The fair assembly moves with graceful air,
And leaves of laurel bind the flowing hair.
  Niobe comes with all her royal race,
With charms unnumber’d, and superior grace:
Her Phrygian garments of delightful hue,
Inwove with gold, refulgent to the view,
Beyond description beautiful she moves
Like heav’nly Venus, ’midst her smiles and loves:
She views around the supplicating train,
And shakes her graceful head with stern disdain,
Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes,
And thus reviles celestial deities:
“What madness drives the Theban ladies fair
“To give their incense to surrounding air?
“Say why this new sprung deity preferr’d?
“Why vainly fancy your petitions heard?
“Or say why Caeus offspring is obey’d,
“While to my goddesship no tribute’s paid?
“For me no altars blaze with living fires,
“No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires,
“Tho’ Cadmus’ palace, not unknown to fame,
“And Phrygian nations all revere my name.
“Where’er I turn my eyes vast wealth I find,
“Lo! here an empress with a goddess join’d.
“What, shall a Titaness be deify’d,
“To whom the spacious earth a couch deny’d!
“Nor heav’n, nor earth, nor sea receiv’d your queen,
“Till pitying Delos took the wand’rer in.
“Round me what a large progeny is spread!
“No frowns of fortune has my soul to dread.
“What if indignant she decrease my train
“More than Latona’s number will remain;
“Then hence, ye Theban dames, hence haste away,
“Nor longer off’rings to Latona pay;
“Regard the orders of Amphion’s spouse,
“And take the leaves of laurel from your brows.”
Niobe spoke.  The Theban maids obey’d,
Their brows unbound, and left the rights unpaid.
  The angry goddess heard, then silence broke
On Cynthus’ summit, and indignant spoke;
“Phoebus! behold, thy mother in disgrace,
“Who to no goddess yields the prior place
“Except to Juno’s self, who reigns above,
“The spouse and sister of the thund’ring Jove.
“Niobe, sprung from Tantalus, inspires
“Each Theban ***** with rebellious fires;
“No reason her imperious temper quells,
“But all her father in her tongue rebels;
“Wrap her own sons for her blaspheming breath,
“Apollo! wrap them in the shades of death.”
Latona ceas’d, and ardent thus replies
The God, whose glory decks th’ expanded skies.
  “Cease thy complaints, mine be the task assign’d
“To punish pride, and scourge the rebel mind.”
This Phoebe join’d.—They wing their instant flight;
Thebes trembled as th’ immortal pow’rs alight.
  With clouds incompass’d glorious Phoebus stands;
The feather’d vengeance quiv’ring in his hands.
     Near Cadmus’ walls a plain extended lay,
Where Thebes’ young princes pass’d in sport the day:
There the bold coursers bounded o’er the plains,
While their great masters held the golden reins.
Ismenus first the racing pastime led,
And rul’d the fury of his flying steed.
“Ah me,” he sudden cries, with shrieking breath,
While in his breast he feels the shaft of death;
He drops the bridle on his courser’s mane,
Before his eyes in shadows swims the plain,
He, the first-born of great Amphion’s bed,
Was struck the first, first mingled with the dead.
  Then didst thou, Sipylus, the language hear
Of fate portentous whistling in the air:
As when th’ impending storm the sailor sees
He spreads his canvas to the fav’ring breeze,
So to thine horse thou gav’st the golden reins,
Gav’st him to rush impetuous o’er the plains:
But ah! a fatal shaft from Phoebus’ hand
Smites thro’ thy neck, and sinks thee on the sand.
  Two other brothers were at wrestling found,
And in their pastime claspt each other round:
A shaft that instant from Apollo’s hand
Transfixt them both, and stretcht them on the sand:
Together they their cruel fate bemoan’d,
Together languish’d, and together groan’d:
Together too th’ unbodied spirits fled,
And sought the gloomy mansions of the dead.
Alphenor saw, and trembling at the view,
Beat his torn breast, that chang’d its snowy hue.
He flies to raise them in a kind embrace;
A brother’s fondness triumphs in his face:
Alphenor fails in this fraternal deed,
A dart dispatch’d him (so the fates decreed:)
Soon as the arrow left the deadly wound,
His issuing entrails smoak’d upon the ground.
  What woes on blooming Damasichon wait!
His sighs portend his near impending fate.
Just where the well-made leg begins to be,
And the soft sinews form the supple knee,
The youth sore wounded by the Delian god
Attempts t’ extract the crime-avenging rod,
But, whilst he strives the will of fate t’ avert,
Divine Apollo sends a second dart;
Swift thro’ his throat the feather’d mischief flies,
Bereft of sense, he drops his head, and dies.
  Young Ilioneus, the last, directs his pray’r,
And cries, “My life, ye gods celestial! spare.”
Apollo heard, and pity touch’d his heart,
But ah! too late, for he had sent the dart:
Thou too, O Ilioneus, art doom’d to fall,
The fates refuse that arrow to recal.
  On the swift wings of ever flying Fame
To Cadmus’ palace soon the tidings came:
Niobe heard, and with indignant eyes
She thus express’d her anger and surprise:
“Why is such privilege to them allow’d?
“Why thus insulted by the Delian god?
“Dwells there such mischief in the pow’rs above?
“Why sleeps the vengeance of immortal Jove?”
For now Amphion too, with grief oppress’d,
Had plung’d the deadly dagger in his breast.
Niobe now, less haughty than before,
With lofty head directs her steps no more
She, who late told her pedigree divine,
And drove the Thebans from Latona’s shrine,
How strangely chang’d!—yet beautiful in woe,
She weeps, nor weeps unpity’d by the foe.
On each pale corse the wretched mother spread
Lay overwhelm’d with grief, and kiss’d her dead,
Then rais’d her arms, and thus, in accents slow,
“Be sated cruel Goddess! with my woe;
“If I’ve offended, let these streaming eyes,
“And let this sev’nfold funeral suffice:
“Ah! take this wretched life you deign’d to save,
“With them I too am carried to the grave.
“Rejoice triumphant, my victorious foe,
“But show the cause from whence your triumphs flow?
“Tho’ I unhappy mourn these children slain,
“Yet greater numbers to my lot remain.”
She ceas’d, the bow string twang’d with awful sound,
Which struck with terror all th’ assembly round,
Except the queen, who stood unmov’d alone,
By her distresses more presumptuous grown.
Near the pale corses stood their sisters fair
In sable vestures and dishevell’d hair;
One, while she draws the fatal shaft away,
Faints, falls, and sickens at the light of day.
To sooth her mother, lo! another flies,
And blames the fury of inclement skies,
And, while her words a filial pity show,
Struck dumb—indignant seeks the shades below.
Now from the fatal place another flies,
Falls in her flight, and languishes, and dies.
Another on her sister drops in death;
A fifth in trembling terrors yields her breath;
While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain,
Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain.
  One only daughter lives, and she the least;
The queen close clasp’d the daughter to her breast:
“Ye heav’nly pow’rs, ah spare me one,” she cry’d,
“Ah! spare me one,” the vocal hills reply’d:
In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny,
In her embrace she sees her daughter die.
   “The queen of all her family bereft,
“Without or husband, son, or daughter left,
“Grew stupid at the shock.  The passing air
“Made no impression on her stiff’ning hair.
“The blood forsook her face: amidst the flood
“Pour’d from her cheeks, quite fix’d her eye-*****
  “stood.
“Her tongue, her palate both obdurate grew,
“Her curdled veins no longer motion knew;
“The use of neck, and arms, and feet was gone,
“And ev’n her bowels hard’ned into stone:
“A marble statue now the queen appears,
“But from the marble steal the silent tears.”

St. Agnes' Eve--Ah, bitter chill it was!
    The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
    The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
    And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
    Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told
    His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
    Like pious incense from a censer old,
    Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet ******'s picture, while his prayer he saith.

    His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
    Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
    And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,
    Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
    The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
    Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails:
    Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries,
    He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails
To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

    Northward he turneth through a little door,
    And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue
    Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor;
    But no--already had his deathbell rung;
    The joys of all his life were said and sung:
    His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve:
    Another way he went, and soon among
    Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve,
And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve.

    That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft;
    And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide,
    From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft,
    The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide:
    The level chambers, ready with their pride,
    Were glowing to receive a thousand guests:
    The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,
    Star'd, where upon their heads the cornice rests,
With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their *******.

    At length burst in the argent revelry,
    With plume, tiara, and all rich array,
    Numerous as shadows haunting faerily
    The brain, new stuff'd, in youth, with triumphs gay
    Of old romance. These let us wish away,
    And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there,
    Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,
    On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care,
As she had heard old dames full many times declare.

    They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,
    Young virgins might have visions of delight,
    And soft adorings from their loves receive
    Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
    If ceremonies due they did aright;
    As, supperless to bed they must retire,
    And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
    Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

    Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:
    The music, yearning like a God in pain,
    She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,
    Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train
    Pass by--she heeded not at all: in vain
      Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,
    And back retir'd; not cool'd by high disdain,
    But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:
She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year.

    She danc'd along with vague, regardless eyes,
    Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:
    The hallow'd hour was near at hand: she sighs
    Amid the timbrels, and the throng'd resort
    Of whisperers in anger, or in sport;
    'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn,
    Hoodwink'd with faery fancy; all amort,
    Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn,
And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

    So, purposing each moment to retire,
    She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors,
    Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
    For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,
    Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores
    All saints to give him sight of Madeline,
    But for one moment in the tedious hours,
    That he might gaze and worship all unseen;
Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss--in sooth such things have been.

    He ventures in: let no buzz'd whisper tell:
    All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords
    Will storm his heart, Love's fev'rous citadel:
    For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,
    Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords,
    Whose very dogs would execrations howl
    Against his lineage: not one breast affords
    Him any mercy, in that mansion foul,
Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul.

    Ah, happy chance! the aged creature came,
    Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,
    To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame,
    Behind a broad half-pillar, far beyond
    The sound of merriment and chorus bland:
    He startled her; but soon she knew his face,
    And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand,
    Saying, "Mercy, Porphyro! hie thee from this place;
They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!

    "Get hence! get hence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand;
    He had a fever late, and in the fit
    He cursed thee and thine, both house and land:
    Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit
    More tame for his gray hairs--Alas me! flit!
    Flit like a ghost away."--"Ah, Gossip dear,
    We're safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit,
    And tell me how"--"Good Saints! not here, not here;
Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier."

    He follow'd through a lowly arched way,
    Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,
    And as she mutter'd "Well-a--well-a-day!"
    He found him in a little moonlight room,
    Pale, lattic'd, chill, and silent as a tomb.
    "Now tell me where is Madeline," said he,
    "O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom
    Which none but secret sisterhood may see,
When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously."

    "St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes' Eve--
    Yet men will ****** upon holy days:
    Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve,
    And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays,
    To venture so: it fills me with amaze
    To see thee, Porphyro!--St. Agnes' Eve!
    God's help! my lady fair the conjuror plays
    This very night: good angels her deceive!
But let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve."

    Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,
    While Porphyro upon her face doth look,
    Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone
    Who keepeth clos'd a wond'rous riddle-book,
    As spectacled she sits in chimney nook.
    But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told
    His lady's purpose; and he scarce could brook
    Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold,
And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.

    Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
    Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart
    Made purple riot: then doth he propose
    A stratagem, that makes the beldame start:
    "A cruel man and impious thou art:
    Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream
    Alone with her good angels, far apart
    From wicked men like thee. Go, go!--I deem
Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem."

    "I will not harm her, by all saints I swear,"
    Quoth Porphyro: "O may I ne'er find grace
    When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer,
    If one of her soft ringlets I displace,
    Or look with ruffian passion in her face:
    Good Angela, believe me by these tears;
    Or I will, even in a moment's space,
    Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen's ears,
And beard them, though they be more fang'd than wolves and bears."

    "Ah! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul?
    A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,
    Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll;
    Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening,
    Were never miss'd."--Thus plaining, doth she bring
    A gentler speech from burning Porphyro;
    So woful, and of such deep sorrowing,
    That Angela gives promise she will do
Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe.

    Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy,
    Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide
    Him in a closet, of such privacy
    That he might see her beauty unespy'd,
    And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,
    While legion'd faeries pac'd the coverlet,
    And pale enchantment held her sleepy-ey'd.
    Never on such a night have lovers met,
Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt.

    "It shall be as thou wishest," said the Dame:
    "All cates and dainties shall be stored there
    Quickly on this feast-night: by the tambour frame
    Her own lute thou wilt see: no time to spare,
    For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare
    On such a catering trust my dizzy head.
    Wait here, my child, with patience; kneel in prayer
    The while: Ah! thou must needs the lady wed,
Or may I never leave my grave among the dead."

    So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear.
    The lover's endless minutes slowly pass'd;
    The dame return'd, and whisper'd in his ear
    To follow her; with aged eyes aghast
    From fright of dim espial. Safe at last,
    Through many a dusky gallery, they gain
    The maiden's chamber, silken, hush'd, and chaste;
    Where Porphyro took covert, pleas'd amain.
His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain.

    Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade,
    Old Angela was feeling for the stair,
    When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid,
    Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware:
    With silver taper's light, and pious care,
    She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led
    To a safe level matting. Now prepare,
    Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;
She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled.

    Out went the taper as she hurried in;
    Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:
    She clos'd the door, she panted, all akin
    To spirits of the air, and visions wide:
    No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!
    But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
    Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
    As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

    A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
    All garlanded with carven imag'ries
    Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
    And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
    Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
    As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;
    And in the midst, '**** thousand heraldries,
    And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.

    Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
    And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
    As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon;
    Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
    And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
    And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
    She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
    Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

    Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
    Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
    Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
    Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
    Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
    Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-****,
    Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
    In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

    Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
    In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay,
    Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd
    Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;
    Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
    Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain;
    Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
    Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

    Stol'n to this paradise, and so entranced,
    Porphyro gaz'd upon her empty dress,
    And listen'd to her breathing, if it chanced
    To wake into a slumberous tenderness;
    Which when he heard, that minute did he bless,
    And breath'd himself: then from the closet crept,
    Noiseless a

A tug of war
It is the past experience and what was saw and felt
A word in keeping a person in line
A restriction of one’s thoughts and actions
A procedure in holding one back
******* being a form beyond one’s accord
Thank God there is a Lord
There is a chance to survive
More than a thought being a strive
I dream but all I see is a nightmare
I see effort, but when will there be preserver?
Its like a road block with detour
A method of turn back
I feel as if I am trapped in bonds
Maybe I am still sleep and need to wake up from my yond
Perhaps it’s nothing more than a dream
It’s my thinking I am in a movie stream
But its truly tough being rough
A different slavery oppression of the past with a theory of the present
A overseer continuing in present oppression
A silenced voice having no expression
The downward bound with no mountain reach
It’s time for a rebellion approach
Oppression is real and not a joke
It’s like an open wound with having a stinging poke
Oppression is alive and attempting to do well
Yet the world has a message in tell
‘OPPRESS AND OVERCOME, ITS ABOUT NO MOVEMENT AND BEING NUMB. IT TAKES MULTITUDES IN SUPPLYING THE STRENGTH, BUT ALL MUST GO THE MILES NO MATTER WHAT THE LENGTH”
Survival is how you chose to live
Its not a verb but is subjective
The voice must always be objective
Oppression cannot continue in terms in having its way
The sunrise has risen and it’s a tomorrow being a new day
These are the times to move forward and be strong
It’s a matter of all personalities of creeds in knowing how to get along
So shake whatever chains you feel you have on
Stand up and be counted where you belong
Don’t let any form of oppression hold you back
You have grasped the concept of understanding in the theory of thinking sharp being the detailed tack
Just give oppression one big smack
Listen America it’s the various cultures that stack
Oppression stand back as you have been defeated being a pack.

Militant, cursing, ruling, ordering
telling me what to do
how to do
when and where to do
I do
What I want
You tell me what to want
but, I do what I want
and will
not
listen
to
you

i can move from the highly lyrical into what's deemed
modern -
        poetising within a prosaic framework,
gone are coordinates that would
define a poem on the premise of:
whether there's a pun in it.
       sure, poems as chicken scratches
to what would otherwise be an English
teacher's *******: pulverising
a haiku to mean an infinite number of things,
and about a dozen essays by students.
the opposite of what's nonetheless:
    squeezing out juice from an already
squeezed out lemon... and i mean lemon
because there's a threshold...
           poetry is tarnished by what i call
the over-scientification of language...
                 only poetry attracts
so much linguistic categorisation,
so much morge tenure, so much dissection,
before poetry is even spoken
it has already been dissected - a befitting
target practice for budding medicine students...
          and some even deem it a outlet to
their professions: as if poetry was nothing
but a colouring-in book compared to
a da Vinci sketch.
                why not become a martyr for the ******
art? sickly sweet with its rhyme,
  the auxiliary recommendation on a birthday
card... which upon industrialisation
                               is nothing more than
    a thumping of a hammer near a protruding
nail in a crucifix... but a hammer that never
   makes contact with the nail...
why ***** this art, because of the industrious
nature of scribblers exacted to 600 pages worth
of a novel, when, perhaps, one thing is said
and can be said to be actually memorable?
well: there is a greater demand for handcrafted
objects than Ikea veneer, that much can be said...
it takes a few glugs of whiskey and a few cigarettes
to get the final product...
            it doesn't take industriousness -
poetry requires handcrafting, and what's revolutionary
about our times? they once claimed
     southpaws to be of diabolical design,
   but now both hands are used when "writing",
sure, the archaic fluidity of the movement of the hand
is gone: so as i write, i do the cliche of a
peasant listening to classical music while pretending
to conduct an orchestra, that finicky maestro
hand gesture... waltz before you can walk
is all i have to say... and yes:
we either have our Humphrey Bogart moments,
or Forrest Gump moments...
                  Hanks did the miraculous -
play the idiot, and play the serious role -
     which was harder to do, Mr. Bean or Black Adder?
it's hard to play the village idiot while
    being submerged in the bile of malice
   and staring into attempted feats of quasi intelligence...
but you get the hang of it...
   your eyes become like nuggets of coal...
           whereby those that incite pity wet them,
and those that incite contempt: light them up...
        by the time they have burned out...
they have turned into nuggets of sulphur -
          inorganic methane - yellowish grit:
as some Dalton said - could the cliffs of Dover ever
be perceived as sulphuric? the Sulphuric Cliffs
of Dover... apparently this is what defined
London when Christopher Wren took to
ushering in a foundation as Nero did to Rome:
on the chessboard of stone.
        and yes... i can be seen as the oppressor,
after all, i live in a country that prizes its suburban
housing as if miniature castles...
and gardens... boy these people love their gardens...
but they never use them!
    i can use a window to my advantage,
sit on the windowsill and smoke a cigarette and drink
a whiskey, unafraid of voyeurism...
                    pompous in my presence there,
perched like a crow, grinding all life into a halt
as my neighbours peer into the recesses of
    what's 4 by 4 by 4 of living (civil) rooms...
       can we but change the name of this space?
can we call living rooms civil rooms,
   where we acknowledge some sort of civility
rather than a wrestling for the television remote?
i can make little things give me an advantage,
if the toilet is being occupied,
  i'll use the garden as my toilet...
           i feel complete disdain for people who
"require" a garden, but never use it... of people
who "require" a garden, but are never seen in it...
   i'm hardly a c.c.t.v. surveillance object,
   but i feel that over-exposure to ******* reads
as a counter in that: people start to become
      phobic about voyeurism... as universities claim
them to be: "caught with your hand down your trousers
in a safespace", where dolphins jump over
rainbows and unicorns speak Haitian voodoo!
              there is this fear, which is why i'll use the
garden more than the people around me...
          which means: owning a garden is the last
stronghold of moving into an urban environment from
a rural one...
             or perhaps i'm just good at what i do
           and the last point becomes a tangent i care not
to continue... should i ask
            (whether that's true)?
            i have this throbbing sensation in my eyes
when i write such things and overhear
  what's necessary to rereading books in snippets -
which is better than regurgitating maxims
    as if some truth will magically pop-up (once more)
like a Leprechaun with a *** of gold -
  a new film, and hence the all important soundtrack.
rereading books in snippet format reveals much
more than a memorable quote,
           given there's an adequate soundtrack
to accompany you revisiting the book you managed
to take on a weekend holiday (like a girlfriend),
  like lawrence lipton's the holy barbarians...
   (all about the beats)...
              the snippet? chapter 15, the social lie
(martino publishing mansfield centre 2009), pp. 294 - 296...
      the music? ~20minutes into http://tinyurl.com/zdvp8sc
(ben salisbury & geoff barrow)... or what
i image to be a toned down version of
                 ...
) interlude... wacko gets summoned to steal a mouse
from a cat...
      double time... the mouse is unharmed...
all action takes place in the garden...
   running after a cat, catching the ghostly mouse,
i mean: frozen by fear... senile little thing...
     petting the mouse... obviously within the
framework: the most famous mouse in the world
scenario... mouse is put into my neighbour's
garden: where it came from: which kinda makes
this whole thing a practice in Hinduism
     (i can't stop the industrialisation of
farming pigs or chickens or cows...
      so ******* to the sourced sustainably,
organic chickens et al.)...                                 (
i was looking for something as equally pulverising
as ¥ (chemical brother's
song life is sweet)...
      i guess i found it...
                            and what was that bit about
not getting hassle on the internet?
                      i can't force people to read my stuff...
how i love this idea of a gym and making an effort...
both the writer and the reader entwined -
rather than watching you-tube vloggers treat their audience
like penguins feeding their chicks regurgitation as part of
               the info-wars... alter news: propaganda.
'what is the disaffiliate disaffiliating himself from?
      the immense myth promulgated from Madison Ave.
& Morningside Heights...
              the professors and advertisement men (indistinguishable
these days, or in those days - apparently)...
   that intellectual achievement lies within the social order
and that you can be a great poet as an advertising man,
a great thinker as a professor...' hence the myth.
              summarised later as:
'the entire pressure of social order is to make
         literature into advertisement.'
  and why do they shoot people in North Korea and
Saudi Arabia (well, chop more than shoot)?
              bad literature, a.k.a. bad advertisement.
am i a bad advertiser?         point being: am i selling anything?
oh gee! i just might be...
   but i feel there's no need to oppress people into
reading something...         as was the same with
my democratic romance with a personal library of mine:
   how to create a democratic representation
of literature: or how to hear as many people out...
   even those alive would see the backlog of
stale books of the dead that have been under-appreciated
and need a ****** into the future.
        perhaps not Plato...
                    that's not a book, that's a column...
but i despise how feminism ignores its greatest asset...
Mary Shelley... no woman could have single-handedly
become so celebrated in pop culture...
               ex_machina is obviously a revamp of Frankenstein...
Mary Shelley is the embodiment of a woman worthy
a continual revised celebration...
                       you can see her celebrated more times than
any politically minded feminist of whatever 1st 2nd or
3rd movement: because she has the ability to
    turn a man's ego into a ******* umpf!
  like a cat listening in on a scuttling mouse...
              she testifies that women have supreme equality
in the pop culture spheres... after all: Frankenstein is
ugly... Ava? just beyond creepy...
                    she has absolutely no understandable
motives of what Frankenstein intended...
   it not merely creating artificial life...
                    it's about utilising it for a purpose:
in this case a housewife and *** toy... what was Frankenstein
expected to do?         there's no motive other than
     a per se intention... an open & closed argument...
was the monster going to be... a butler?
                  and instead of rebelling against a motive
that awaits her... the rebellion against a per se leaves
Frankenstein's monster driven toward isolation...
       Ava? she's already exposed to an interaction
and what's to be her subsequent interaction for the purpose
of being a maid and a *** toy... which doesn't drive
her to an isolation scenario... because the per se
concept is too complicated for her to establish...
    given she's defined as "artificial" intelligence,
she has to feed on an analysis-synthesis dynamic:
    to absolve herself from any notion of being intelligent:
but artificial... the scary part is that without a per se
element to her knowledge acquisition:
                  she sees no meaninglessness to her life -
she is created for certain customary necessities -
     Frankenstein's monster doesn't have that capacity
to acquire knowledge in an analytically-synthetic
dynamic -
  but i still don't understand why intelligence can
be artificial / faked... when man, if not intending to
  create an intelligence matrix outside of his own...
           will usually fake it, or create a superficial intelligence...
   this is the part where you get to play with
etymology, or at least apply etymology to better conceptualise
what some would call: a synonym-proximity barrier...
               which can be jargon to some,
   but in fact it represents "nuances" or nanometric differences
that is understood to imply: feverishness of
   the peacocking staging of vocab for rhetorical purposes...
if we only had a monochromatic utility for language:
people would be discouraged from talking fervently,
passionately, enthusiastically... rhetorically;
as suggested: is artificial intelligence
                                    superficial intelligence?
  or how to sharpen a distinction? or to what purpose
is making an illusion purposive, given that the already
   established technology is meant to be purposive,
as in replacing labour on the assembly line...
                     given that: it's never about faking it.

the only shame i feel: muslims hold a single book to be synonymous of a library.

apologies, this is why i wasn't fully integrated,
i hold enough respect for the English ethnicity to keep
the reins on my Slavic origin, and its ancient history,
i want to see the Graeae cauldron
of multiple-ethnicity and culturalism:
what with former slaves learning
rap to topple the slavish shackles?
no one ever heard my story under
the Germans, Russians and Austro-Hungarians,
all those to topple Israel already toppled me
to migrate and leave my mother *******
toward an an export: until the black gold runs
out you sand-******... until the oil runs out...
until the oil runs out...
you're the one abusing it because you have it...
until the oil runs out sand-******...
you gonna take the slang out of me?
what is it now? global or feminist tactic?
Chine ain't about to give Dagenham back,
like they're not giving Ostrowiec Św.:
first division in 1997.. extra-class...
yummie piggies at the trough:
money was created to pacify and let
rich boy girls' spend...
      Lwów / Lvov was still in poker hands
of Roosevelt... so much for ******* H'america...
     biker-clan-glandular-rhaps (or plural of odes):
****! i hate belonging to come or some thing...
i always thought about comedy prone enlarged *******
for the geography between left ****** antarctic and
right ****** arctic in tune with the jiggly fatty-bergs..
no... factual-bergs...
but you'd never disintegrate into a 0a.d.
given the colonial history narrative that doesn't
involve the old testament and ***-kissers and
hefty conservative ***-pleasers like the book
of Antioch proposed... made that up...
got mixed up thinking on the necromancer of
the year that was actually 1997-8
17th *KSZO Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, tablature
pld.     pts.        w.   d.     l.    f.      a.
         34      24    6   6 22 24 47...
piggie piggie: got the giddy giggly ***** ****-a-doodle-do...
and i know i would too...
small town Polish town, a big Russian
would-be clever-pincer attracted to ******-pinching,
and all the milky drools, down the Nile toward
Cairo, so long as you wife is an Oasis of hamburgers and
strobe-berry epileptics, i.e.: blink 182's what's my age again?
i speak the ******* sprechen and i don't even belong
here... it's like i'm apologising for something that
was coming... thankfully i'm resolved to integrate cognitively
but in the domestic realm have nothing to do with
this language...
     i don't want to speak it to my mother,
i don't want to speak it to my father,
i can't afford to rent a house and prolong a university
bachelor lifestyle, the arabs and nigerians bought
all the flats out and are renting them out...
hopefully to Somalian pirates for: essex tan orange
sake in terms of: if i figured my tongue was an
axe in the first place... i'd lace my life with
many more people applauding...
i never understood this desire to integrate without
having the right to censor what i'm about to
embrace... a contract, much of smallprint readied
on the fidgety hand...
       it's not that i suddenly chose to
ethnically suspend my origins for a need to respect,
i kept my mother tongue for times such as these,
when i can't be approached as white and as inheritor
of colonialism... if i say i'm German they'll *******
clap, i remember once they asked me as if i were
going to do an app. for the caliphate asking me:
you German? no... Polish... huh? what's that?
somewhere in between Germany and Russia...
now i can't claim the ethnicity that my's right hand
of use with tongue... and now i can't claim the
tongue that isn't the ethnicity but is otherwise my
limb-for-limb... 5p.m. tea 100 years later is
a hijab on the streets of Birmingham...
no secret... i just see why i need to be involved like
some James Dean "wannabe" schizoid spice...
there will be no news from Poland concerning
the migrant crisis, no talk of a Muslim takeover...
ironically, as Monty Python would have said:
everyone was expecting a Polish Inquisition,
or as the crowds chanted: Evangelism! not the Quran!
happily are those: seeing America involve
itself in this slogan... me? as ever, the Pontius Pilate:
i said it once, i'll say it again:
panic is worse than fascism...
   panic is worse than fascism...
you don't expect panic, hence the beasts' stampede
in urban areas... fascism? you know it's
coming, and you know it's not good...
             fascism is panic realised too late,
fascism is panic organised... you knew it was coming
and you did nothing to prevent it...
  the only thing that could have prevented Trump
winning the presidency was acknowledging an unequivocal
membership of the union... Cracow wasn't built in
one day... trigger ******* happy panic button: press!
press! oppress! that special relationship of yours?
yeah... ye'ha! rear 'em in with that quiff of yours, cowboy!
ye'ha!
please don't get me involved, i know how to
impale a turk on a rotten wooden stump, rather than
crucify a Syrian on a geometric of mahogany
amid sacred words: so descended onto a mosque's minaret
and the hippy-hair-debate, and no hair and the hajj.
i know, people are apprehensive you're not a businessman
employing 100 slave Mongolians enlisted to blowing
up 1000 helium filled balloons an hour for birthday
party contracts... and none of them are properly trained
in ventriloquist's chipmunk!
              james dean was the original schizophrenic...
who treated society as an asylum,
and the asylum as a garden of Eden...
                                       lucky him: mono-linguistic...
   i sometimes wish i had that luxury on inherent
cleansing of ethnicity, so i could be left with only
a culinary boasting akin to the Persian quote on
falafel... but then you never know who's side you're
gonna be on...
i might as well quote him akin to j. franco post-doppelganger:
you're tearing me apart!
                                   and they say people think...
nonetheless: whether thinking or not,
they are... a welcome aversion in finding pleasure in
zoos; esp. the times when they're sweating like sardines
stashed in vulvas on underground trains: ventriloquists'
suggestion? moans: foetal moans... get me out of here...
otherwise groaned? harder... mm... deeper...
make your pelvis kiss my pelvis! mmm... baby!
first your read the Marquis to get a hard-on,
then you ****-off that hard-on...
and then you do a hand-job to someone else
and pass on the Oxfam motto to some other "hungry" Afrikaan.

Brave Menelaus son of Atreus now came to know that Patroclus had
fallen, and made his way through the front ranks clad in full armour
to bestride him. As a cow stands lowing over her first calf, even so
did yellow-haired Menelaus bestride Patroclus. He held his round
shield and his spear in front of him, resolute to **** any who
should dare face him. But the son of Panthous had also noted the body,
and came up to Menelaus saying, “Menelaus, son of Atreus, draw back,
leave the body, and let the bloodstained spoils be. I was first of the
Trojans and their brave allies to drive my spear into Patroclus, let
me, therefore, have my full glory among the Trojans, or I will take
aim and **** you.”
  To this Menelaus answered in great anger “By father Jove, boasting
is an ill thing. The pard is not more bold, nor the lion nor savage
wild-boar, which is fiercest and most dauntless of all creatures, than
are the proud sons of Panthous. Yet Hyperenor did not see out the days
of his youth when he made light of me and withstood me, deeming me the
meanest soldier among the Danaans. His own feet never bore him back to
gladden his wife and parents. Even so shall I make an end of you
too, if you withstand me; get you back into the crowd and do not
face me, or it shall be worse for you. Even a fool may be wise after
the event.”
  Euphorbus would not listen, and said, “Now indeed, Menelaus, shall
you pay for the death of my brother over whom you vaunted, and whose
wife you widowed in her bridal chamber, while you brought grief
unspeakable on his parents. I shall comfort these poor people if I
bring your head and armour and place them in the hands of Panthous and
noble Phrontis. The time is come when this matter shall be fought
out and settled, for me or against me.”
  As he spoke he struck Menelaus full on the shield, but the spear did
not go through, for the shield turned its point. Menelaus then took
aim, praying to father Jove as he did so; Euphorbus was drawing
back, and Menelaus struck him about the roots of his throat, leaning
his whole weight on the spear, so as to drive it home. The point
went clean through his neck, and his armour rang rattling round him as
he fell heavily to the ground. His hair which was like that of the
Graces, and his locks so deftly bound in bands of silver and gold,
were all bedrabbled with blood. As one who has grown a fine young
olive tree in a clear space where there is abundance of water—the
plant is full of promise, and though the winds beat upon it from every
quarter it puts forth its white blossoms till the blasts of some
fierce hurricane sweep down upon it and level it with the ground—even
so did Menelaus strip the fair youth Euphorbus of his armour after
he had slain him. Or as some fierce lion upon the mountains in the
pride of his strength fastens on the finest heifer in a herd as it
is feeding—first he breaks her neck with his strong jaws, and then
gorges on her blood and entrails; dogs and shepherds raise a hue and
cry against him, but they stand aloof and will not come close to
him, for they are pale with fear—even so no one had the courage to
face valiant Menelaus. The son of Atreus would have then carried off
the armour of the son of Panthous with ease, had not Phoebus Apollo
been angry, and in the guise of Mentes chief of the Cicons incited
Hector to attack him. “Hector,” said he, “you are now going after
the horses of the noble son of Aeacus, but you will not take them;
they cannot be kept in hand and driven by mortal man, save only by
Achilles, who is son to an immortal mother. Meanwhile Menelaus son
of Atreus has bestridden the body of Patroclus and killed the
noblest of the Trojans, Euphorbus son of Panthous, so that he can
fight no more.”
  The god then went back into the toil and turmoil, but the soul of
Hector was darkened with a cloud of grief; he looked along the ranks
and saw Euphorbus lying on the ground with the blood still flowing
from his wound, and Menelaus stripping him of his armour. On this he
made his way to the front like a flame of fire, clad in his gleaming
armour, and crying with a loud voice. When the son of Atreus heard
him, he said to himself in his dismay, “Alas! what shall I do? I may
not let the Trojans take the armour of Patroclus who has fallen
fighting on my behalf, lest some Danaan who sees me should cry shame
upon me. Still if for my honour’s sake I fight Hector and the
Trojans single-handed, they will prove too many for me, for Hector
is bringing them up in force. Why, however, should I thus hesitate?
When a man fights in despite of heaven with one whom a god
befriends, he will soon rue it. Let no Danaan think ill of me if I
give place to Hector, for the hand of heaven is with him. Yet, if I
could find Ajax, the two of us would fight Hector and heaven too, if
we might only save the body of Patroclus for Achilles son of Peleus.
This, of many evils would be the least.”
  While he was thus in two minds, the Trojans came up to him with
Hector at their head; he therefore drew back and left the body,
turning about like some bearded lion who is being chased by dogs and
men from a stockyard with spears and hue and cry, whereon he is
daunted and slinks sulkily off—even so did Menelaus son of Atreus
turn and leave the body of Patroclus. When among the body of his
men, he looked around for mighty Ajax son of Telamon, and presently
saw him on the extreme left of the fight, cheering on his men and
exhorting them to keep on fighting, for Phoebus Apollo had spread a
great panic among them. He ran up to him and said, “Ajax, my good
friend, come with me at once to dead Patroclus, if so be that we may
take the body to Achilles—as for his armour, Hector already has it.”
  These words stirred the heart of Ajax, and he made his way among the
front ranks, Menelaus going with him. Hector had stripped Patroclus of
his armour, and was dragging him away to cut off his head and take the
body to fling before the dogs of Troy. But Ajax came up with his
shield like wall before him, on which Hector withdrew under shelter of
his men, and sprang on to his chariot, giving the armour over to the
Trojans to take to the city, as a great trophy for himself; Ajax,
therefore, covered the body of Patroclus with his broad shield and
bestrode him; as a lion stands over his whelps if hunters have come
upon him in a forest when he is with his little ones—in the pride and
fierceness of his strength he draws his knit brows down till they
cover his eyes—even so did Ajax bestride the body of Patroclus, and
by his side stood Menelaus son of Atreus, nursing great sorrow in
his heart.
  Then Glaucus son of Hippolochus looked fiercely at Hector and
rebuked him sternly. “Hector,” said he, “you make a brave show, but in
fight you are sadly wanting. A runaway like yourself has no claim to
so great a reputation. Think how you may now save your town and
citadel by the hands of your own people born in Ilius; for you will
get no Lycians to fight for you, seeing what thanks they have had
for their incessant hardships. Are you likely, sir, to do anything
to help a man of less note, after leaving Sarpedon, who was at once
your guest and comrade in arms, to be the spoil and prey of the
Danaans? So long as he lived he did good service both to your city and
yourself; yet you had no stomach to save his body from the dogs. If
the Lycians will listen to me, they will go home and leave Troy to its
fate. If the Trojans had any of that daring fearless spirit which lays
hold of men who are fighting for their country and harassing those who
would attack it, we should soon bear off Patroclus into Ilius. Could
we get this dead man away and bring him into the city of Priam, the
Argives would readily give up the armour of Sarpedon, and we should
get his body to boot. For he whose squire has been now killed is the
foremost man at the ships of the Achaeans—he and his close-fighting
followers. Nevertheless you dared not make a stand against Ajax, nor
face him, eye to eye, with battle all round you, for he is a braver
man than you are.”
  Hector scowled at him and answered, “Glaucus, you should know
better. I have held you so far as a man of more understanding than any
in all Lycia, but now I despise you for saying that I am afraid of
Ajax. I fear neither battle nor the din of chariots, but Jove’s will
is stronger than ours; Jove at one time makes even a strong man draw
back and snatches victory from his grasp, while at another he will set
him on to fight. Come hither then, my friend, stand by me and see
indeed whether I shall play the coward the whole day through as you
say, or whether I shall not stay some even of the boldest Danaans from
fighting round the body of Patroclus.”
  As he spoke he called loudly on the Trojans saying, “Trojans,
Lycians, and Dardanians, fighters in close combat, be men, my friends,
and fight might and main, while I put on the goodly armour of
Achilles, which I took when I killed Patroclus.”
  With this Hector left the fight, and ran full speed after his men
who were taking the armour of Achilles to Troy, but had not yet got
far. Standing for a while apart from the woeful fight, he changed
his armour. His own he sent to the strong city of Ilius and to the
Trojans, while he put on the immortal armour of the son of Peleus,
which the gods had given to Peleus, who in his age gave it to his son;
but the son did not grow old in his father’s armour.
  When Jove, lord of the storm-cloud, saw Hector standing aloof and
arming himself in the armour of the son of Peleus, he wagged his
head and muttered to himself saying, “A! poor wretch, you arm in the
armour of a hero, before whom many another trembles, and you reck
nothing of the doom that is already close upon you. You have killed
his comrade so brave and strong, but it was not well that you should
strip the armour from his head and shoulders. I do indeed endow you
with great might now, but as against this you shall not return from
battle to lay the armour of the son of Peleus before Andromache.”
  The son of Saturn bowed his portentous brows, and Hector fitted
the armour to his body, while terrible Mars entered into him, and
filled his whole body with might and valour. With a shout he strode in
among the allies, and his armour flashed about him so that he seemed
to all of them like the great son of Peleus himself. He went about
among them and cheered them on—Mesthles, Glaucus, Medon,
Thersilochus, Asteropaeus, Deisenor and Hippothous, Phorcys,
Chromius and Ennomus the augur. All these did he exhort saying,
“Hear me, allies from other cities who are here in your thousands,
it was not in order to have a crowd about me that I called you
hither each from his several city, but that with heart and soul you
might defend the wives and little ones of the Trojans from the
fierce Achaeans. For this do I oppress my people with your food and
the presents that make you rich. Therefore turn, and charge at the
foe, to stand or fall as is the game of war; whoever shall bring
Patroclus, dead though he be, into the hands of the Trojans, and shall
make Ajax give way before him, I will give him one half of the
spoils while I keep the other. He will thus share like honour with
myself.”
  When he had thus spoken they charged full weight upon the Danaans
with their spears held out before them, and the hopes of each ran high
that he should force Ajax son of Telamon to yield up the body—fools
that they were, for he was about to take the lives of many. Then
Ajax said to Menelaus, “My good friend Menelaus, you and I shall
hardly come out of this fight alive. I am less concerned for the
body of Patroclus, who will shortly become meat for the dogs and
vultures of Troy, than for the safety of my own head and yours. Hector
has wrapped us round in a storm of battle from every quarter, and
our destruction seems now certain. Call then upon the princes of the
Danaans if there is any who can hear us.”
  Menelaus did as he said, and shouted to the Danaans for help at
the top of his voice. “My friends,” he cried, “princes and counsellors
of the Argives, all you who with Agamemnon and Menelaus drink at the
public cost, and give orders each to his own people as Jove vouchsafes
him power and glory, the fight is so thick about me that I cannot
distinguish you severally; come on, therefore, every man unbidden, and
think it shame that Patroclus should become meat and morsel for Trojan
hounds.”
  Fleet Ajax son of Oileus heard him and was first to force his way
through the fight and run to help him. Next came Idomeneus and
Meriones his esquire, peer of murderous Mars. As for the others that
came into the fight after these, who of his own self could name them?
  The Trojans with Hector at their head charged in a body. As a
great wave that comes thundering in at the mouth of some heaven-born
river, and the rocks that jut into the sea ring with the roar of the
breakers that beat and buffet them—even with such a roar did the
Trojans come on; but the Achaeans in singleness of heart stood firm
about the son of Menoetius, and fenced him with their bronze
shields. Jove, moreover, hid the brightness of their helmets in a
thick cloud, for he had borne no grudge against the son of Menoetius
while he was still alive and squire to the descendant of Aeacus;
therefore he was loth to let him fall a prey to the dogs of his foes
the Trojans, and urged his comrades on to defend him.
  At first the Trojans drove the Achaeans back, and they withdrew from
the dead man daunted. The Trojans did not succeed in killing any
one, nevertheless they drew the body away. But the Achaeans did not
lose it long, for Ajax, foremost of all the Danaans after the son of
Peleus alike in stature and prowess, quickly rallied them and made
towards the front like a wild boar upon the mountains when he stands
at bay in the forest glades and routs the hounds and ***** youths that
have attacked him—even so did Ajax son of Telamon passing easily in
among the phalanxes of the Trojans, disperse those who had
bestridden Patroclus and were most bent on winning glory by dragging
him off to their city. At this moment Hippothous brave son of the
Pelasgian Lethus, in his zeal for Hector and the Trojans, was dragging
the body off by the foot through the press of the fight, having
bound a strap round the sinews near the ancle; but a mischief soon
befell him from which none of those could save him who would have
gladly done so, for the son of Telamon sprang forward and smote him on
his bronze-cheeked helmet. The plumed headpiece broke about the
point of the weapon, struck at once by the spear and by the strong
hand of Ajax, so that the ****** brain came oozing out through the
crest-socket. His strength then failed him and he let Patroclus’
foot drop from his hand, as he fell full length dead upon the body;
thus he died far from the fertile land of Larissa, and never repaid
his parents the cost of bringing him up, for his life was cut short
early by the spear of mighty Ajax. Hector then took aim at Ajax with a
spear, but he saw it coming and just managed to avoid it; the spear
passed on and struck Schedius son of noble Iphitus, captain of the
Phoceans, who dwelt in famed Panopeus and reigned over much people; it
struck him under the middle of the collar-bone the bronze point went
right through him, coming out at the bottom of his shoulder-blade, and
his armour rang rattling round him as he fell heavily to the ground.
Ajax in his turn struck noble Phorcys son of Phaenops in the middle of
the belly as he was bestriding Hippothous, and broke the plate of
his cuirass; whereon the spear tore out his entrails and he clutched
the ground in his palm as he fell to earth. Hector and those who
were in the front rank then gave ground, while the Argives raised a
loud cry of triumph, and drew off the bodies of Phorcys and Hippothous
which they stripped presently of their armour.
  The Trojans would now have been worsted by the brave Achaeans and
driven back to Ilius through their own cowardice, while the Argives,
so great was their courage and endurance, would have achieved a
triumph even against the will of Jove, if Apollo had not roused
Aeneas, in the lik

to oppress
means to abuse;
the oppressed
are the people
you have abused
with words
to degrade them,
and actions
to end their lives
every day it seems
they pay prices
for sins they can't remember
and the people
who receive their money
are the people
they work for.

if it doesn't make sense,
make a change.

..."Una selva oscura."--Dante.


Awake or sleeping (for I know not which)
  I was or was not mazed within a wood
  Where every mother-bird brought up her brood
    Safe in some leafy niche
Of oak or ash, of cypress or of beech,

Of silvery aspen trembling delicately,
  Of plane or warmer-tinted sycamore,
  Of elm that dies in secret from the core,
    Of ivy weak and free,
Of pines, of all green lofty things that be.

Such birds they seemed as challenged each desire;
  Like spots of azure heaven upon the wing,
  Like downy emeralds that alight and sing,
    Like actual coals on fire,
  Like anything they seemed, and everything.

Such mirth they made, such warblings and such chat
  With tongue of music in a well-tuned beak,
  They seemed to speak more wisdom than we speak,
    To make our music flat
  And all our subtlest reasonings wild or weak.

Their meat was nought but flowers like butterflies,
  With berries coral-colored or like gold;
  Their drink was only dew, which blossoms hold
    Deep where the honey lies;
Their wings and tails were lit by sparkling eyes.

The shade wherein they revelled was a shade
  That danced and twinkled to the unseen sun;
  Branches and leaves cast shadows one by one,
    And all their shadows swayed
In breaths of air that rustled and that played.

A sound of waters neither rose nor sank,
  And spread a sense of freshness through the air;
  It seemed not here or there, but everywhere,
    As if the whole earth drank,
Root fathom deep and strawberry on its bank.

But I who saw such things as I have said,
  Was overdone with utter weariness;
  And walked in care, as one whom fears oppress
    Because above his head
Death hangs, or damage, or the dearth of bread.

Each sore defeat of my defeated life
  Faced and outfaced me in that bitter hour;
  And turned to yearning palsy all my power,
    And all my peace to strife,
Self stabbing self with keen lack-pity knife.

Sweetness of beauty moved me to despair,
  Stung me to anger by its mere content,
  Made me all lonely on that way I went,
    Piled care upon my care,
Brimmed full my cup, and stripped me empty and bare:

For all that was but showed what all was not,
  But gave clear proof of what might never be;
  Making more destitute my poverty,
    And yet more blank my lot,
  And me much sadder by its jubilee.

Therefore I sat me down: for wherefore walk?
  And closed mine eyes: for wherefore see or hear?
  Alas, I had no shutter to mine ear,
    And could not shun the talk
  Of all rejoicing creatures far or near.

Without my will I hearkened and I heard
  (Asleep or waking, for I know not which),
  Till note by note the music changed its pitch;
    Bird ceased to answer bird,
And every wind sighed softly if it stirred.

The drip of widening waters seemed to weep,
  All fountains sobbed and gurgled as they sprang,
Somewhere a cataract cried out in its leap
    Sheer down a headlong steep;
  High over all cloud-thunders gave a clang.

Such universal sound of lamentation
  I heard and felt, fain not to feel or hear;
  Nought else there seemed but anguish far and near;
    Nought else but all creation
  Moaning and groaning wrung by pain or fear,

Shuddering in the misery of its doom:
  My heart then rose a rebel against light,
  Scouring all earth and heaven and depth and height,
    Ingathering wrath and gloom,
  Ingathering wrath to wrath and night to night.

Ah me, the bitterness of such revolt,
  All impotent, all hateful, and all hate,
That kicks and breaks itself against the bolt
    Of an imprisoning fate,
  And vainly shakes, and cannot shake the gate.

Agony to agony, deep called to deep,
  Out of the deep I called of my desire;
  My strength was weakness and my heart was fire;
    Mine eyes that would not weep
Or sleep, scaled height and depth, and could not sleep;

The eyes, I mean, of my rebellious soul,
  For still my ****** eyes were closed and dark:
  A random thing I seemed without a mark,
    Racing without a goal,
  Adrift upon life's sea without an ark.

More leaden than the actual self of lead
  Outer and inner darkness weighed on me.
  The tide of anger ebbed. Then fierce and free
    Surged full above my head
  The moaning tide of helpless misery.

Why should I breathe, whose breath was but a sigh?
  Why should I live, who drew such painful breath?
Oh weary work, the unanswerable why!--
    Yet I, why should I die,
  Who had no hope in life, no hope in death?

Grasses and mosses and the fallen leaf
  Make peaceful bed for an indefinite term;
  But underneath the grass there gnaws a worm--
    Haply, there gnaws a grief--
Both, haply always; not, as now, so brief.

The pleasure I remember, it is past;
  The pain I feel is passing, passing by;
  Thus all the world is passing, and thus I:
    All things that cannot last
  Have grown familiar, and are born to die.

And being familiar, have so long been borne
  That habit trains us not to break but bend:
Mourning grows natural to us who mourn
    In foresight of an end,
  But that which ends not who shall brave or mend?

Surely the ripe fruits tremble on their bough,
  They cling and linger trembling till they drop:
I, trembling, cling to dying life; for how
    Face the perpetual Now?
  Birthless and deathless, void of start or stop,

Void of repentance, void of hope and fear,
  Of possibility, alternative,
  Of all that ever made us bear to live
    From night to morning here,
  Of promise even which has no gift to give.

The wood, and every creature of the wood,
  Seemed mourning with me in an undertone;
  Soft scattered chirpings and a windy moan,
    Trees rustling where they stood
And shivered, showed compassion for my mood.

Rage to despair; and now despair had turned
  Back to self-pity and mere weariness,
With yearnings like a smouldering fire that burned,
    And might grow more or less,
  And might die out or wax to white excess.

Without, within me, music seemed to be;
  Something not music, yet most musical,
Silence and sound in heavenly harmony;
    At length a pattering fall
Of feet, a bell, and bleatings, broke through all.

Then I looked up. The wood lay in a glow
  From golden sunset and from ruddy sky;
  The sun had stooped to earth though once so high;
    Had stooped to earth, in slow
Warm dying loveliness brought near and low.

Each water-drop made answer to the light,
  Lit up a spark and showed the sun his face;
  Soft purple shadows paved the grassy space
    And crept from height to height,
  From height to loftier height crept up apace.

While opposite the sun a gazing moon
  Put on his glory for her coronet,
Kindling her luminous coldness to its noon,
    As his great splendor set;
  One only star made up her train as yet.

Each twig was tipped with gold, each leaf was edged
  And veined with gold from the gold-flooded west;
Each mother-bird, and mate-bird, and unfledged
    Nestling, and curious nest,
  Displayed a gilded moss or beak or breast.

And filing peacefully between the trees,
  Having the moon behind them, and the sun
Full in their meek mild faces, walked at ease
    A homeward flock, at peace
  With one another and with every one.

A patriarchal ram with tinkling bell
  Led all his kin; sometimes one browsing sheep
  Hung back a moment, or one lamb would leap
    And frolic in a dell;
Yet still they kept together, journeying well,

And bleating, one or other, many or few,
  Journeying together toward the sunlit west;
  Mild face by face, and woolly breast by breast,
    Patient, sun-brightened too,
  Still journeying toward the sunset and their rest.

I wrote words
To try and bandage
The broken things.
Things like the mind and soul and hearts,
Of angels that fell apart and wings have given out,
I let the broken wing do its thing,
You can't fix a Devil in disguise,
With words acting like tape and bandages,
And your devil commanded wings
Flew you down corridors of sorrow,
And classroom bullies of depression,
And those heart palpitations,
Was your chest trying to protect you from within,
Not telling you to let the devil in and steal your soul for a mere sanity,
Your not as insane as they come,
Devils and Angels all are one as the same hand,
They have bend dealt and handed out a loaded gun,
And what they chose to do with the gun,
To put it to your temple,
Or to there's over an over again,
Is all in the free will and mind a god from above gave man kind,
The freedom of free mind and thought,
But why are we blind?
We have the right to things other animals have there rights stripped from,
And we do that to other countries, people, and ourselves,
Like a god wrote a bible that is lines in the game telephone,
passed on like dropped calls that still got the message with the little details missing.
Because it was a story to teach you something,
To help you get through a hard time,
But instead we use gods gifts to oppress those around us,
And those around us,
Use it to oppress us,
So my words try to act like bandages,
Like gods did,
But even God couldn't fix the broken things,
because God made the world and left the broken things,
while he rested on the 7th day,
when he could of fixed things.
what would he of changed?

Every ounce of pressure against my veins,
like the flood of heavy summer rains.
Trying to escape the coating of my flesh,
internal tensions I could not oppress.
I hear crickets, smell the morning dew.
All I can ever concentrate on is you.
Made to feel nervous but oh so calm,
sometimes even sweet like cherry lip balm.
A moment of combustion then release,
your tongue wanders onto my body, into a crease.
I'll never care if I get rich,
so ever long as you ease my twitch.
Stale smoke and the scent of butane,
breath seeps into me like a bloodstain.
You, a child at heart
and I, a freak into abstract art, like Ad Reinhardt.
What a fine creation, our own constellation,
an innovation, better than intoxication.

“It is the voice of years, that are gone! they roll before me, with
  all their deeds.”

  Ossian.


NEWSTEAD! fast-falling, once-resplendent dome!
Religion’s shrine! repentant HENRY’S pride!
Of Warriors, Monks, and Dames the cloister’d tomb,
Whose pensive shades around thy ruins glide,

Hail to thy pile! more honour’d in thy fall,
  Than modern mansions, in their pillar’d state;
Proudly majestic frowns thy vaulted hall,
  Scowling defiance on the blasts of fate.

No mail-clad Serfs, obedient to their Lord,
  In grim array, the crimson cross demand;
Or gay assemble round the festive board,
  Their chief’s retainers, an immortal band.

Else might inspiring Fancy’s magic eye
  Retrace their progress, through the lapse of time;
Marking each ardent youth, ordain’d to die,
  A votive pilgrim, in Judea’s clime.

But not from thee, dark pile! departs the Chief;
  His feudal realm in other regions lay:
In thee the wounded conscience courts relief,
  Retiring from the garish blaze of day.

Yes! in thy gloomy cells and shades profound,
  The monk abjur’d a world, he ne’er could view;
Or blood-stain’d Guilt repenting, solace found,
  Or Innocence, from stern Oppression, flew.

A Monarch bade thee from that wild arise,
  Where Sherwood’s outlaws, once, were wont to prowl;
And Superstition’s crimes, of various dyes,
  Sought shelter in the Priest’s protecting cowl.

Where, now, the grass exhales a murky dew,
  The humid pall of life-extinguish’d clay,
In sainted fame, the sacred Fathers grew,
  Nor raised their pious voices, but to pray.

Where, now, the bats their wavering wings extend,
  Soon as the gloaming spreads her waning shade;
The choir did, oft, their mingling vespers blend,
  Or matin orisons to Mary paid.

Years roll on years; to ages, ages yield;
  Abbots to Abbots, in a line, succeed:
Religion’s charter, their protecting shield,
  Till royal sacrilege their doom decreed.

One holy HENRY rear’d the Gothic walls,
  And bade the pious inmates rest in peace;
Another HENRY the kind gift recalls,
  And bids devotion’s hallow’d echoes cease.

Vain is each threat, or supplicating prayer;
  He drives them exiles from their blest abode,
To roam a dreary world, in deep despair—
  No friend, no home, no refuge, but their God.

Hark! how the hall, resounding to the strain,
  Shakes with the martial music’s novel din!
The heralds of a warrior’s haughty reign,
  High crested banners wave thy walls within.

Of changing sentinels the distant hum,
  The mirth of feasts, the clang of burnish’d arms,
The braying trumpet, and the hoarser drum,
  Unite in concert with increas’d alarms.

An abbey once, a regal fortress now,
  Encircled by insulting rebel powers;
War’s dread machines o’erhang thy threat’ning brow,
  And dart destruction, in sulphureous showers.

Ah! vain defence! the hostile traitor’s siege,
  Though oft repuls’d, by guile o’ercomes the brave;
His thronging foes oppress the faithful Liege,
  Rebellion’s reeking standards o’er him wave.

Not unaveng’d the raging Baron yields;
  The blood of traitors smears the purple plain;
Unconquer’d still, his falchion there he wields,
  And days of glory, yet, for him remain.

Still, in that hour, the warrior wish’d to strew
  Self-gather’d laurels on a self-sought grave;
But Charles’ protecting genius hither flew,
  The monarch’s friend, the monarch’s hope, to save.

Trembling, she ******’d him from th’ unequal strife,
  In other fields the torrent to repel;
For nobler combats, here, reserv’d his life,
  To lead the band, where godlike FALKLAND fell.

From thee, poor pile! to lawless plunder given,
  While dying groans their painful requiem sound,
Far different incense, now, ascends to Heaven,
  Such victims wallow on the gory ground.

There many a pale and ruthless Robber’s corse,
  Noisome and ghast, defiles thy sacred sod;
O’er mingling man, and horse commix’d with horse,
  Corruption’s heap, the savage spoilers trod.

Graves, long with rank and sighing weeds o’erspread,
  Ransack’d resign, perforce, their mortal mould:
From ruffian fangs, escape not e’en the dead,
  Racked from repose, in search for buried gold.

Hush’d is the harp, unstrung the warlike lyre,
  The minstrel’s palsied hand reclines in death;
No more he strikes the quivering chords with fire,
  Or sings the glories of the martial wreath.

At length the sated murderers, gorged with prey,
  Retire: the clamour of the fight is o’er;
Silence again resumes her awful sway,
  And sable Horror guards the massy door.

Here, Desolation holds her dreary court:
  What satellites declare her dismal reign!
Shrieking their dirge, ill-omen’d birds resort,
  To flit their vigils, in the hoary fane.

Soon a new Morn’s restoring beams dispel
  The clouds of Anarchy from Britain’s skies;
The fierce Usurper seeks his native hell,
  And Nature triumphs, as the Tyrant dies.

With storms she welcomes his expiring groans;
  Whirlwinds, responsive, greet his labouring breath;
Earth shudders, as her caves receive his bones,
  Loathing the offering of so dark a death.

The legal Ruler now resumes the helm,
  He guides through gentle seas, the prow of state;
Hope cheers, with wonted smiles, the peaceful realm,
  And heals the bleeding wounds of wearied Hate.

The gloomy tenants, Newstead! of thy cells,
  Howling, resign their violated nest;
Again, the Master on his tenure dwells,
  Enjoy’d, from absence, with enraptured zest.

Vassals, within thy hospitable pale,
  Loudly carousing, bless their Lord’s return;
Culture, again, adorns the gladdening vale,
  And matrons, once lamenting, cease to mourn.

A thousand songs, on tuneful echo, float,
  Unwonted foliage mantles o’er the trees;
And, hark! the horns proclaim a mellow note,
  The hunters’ cry hangs lengthening on the breeze.

Beneath their coursers’ hoofs the valleys shake;
  What fears! what anxious hopes! attend the chase!
The dying stag seeks refuge in the lake;
  Exulting shouts announce the finish’d race.

Ah happy days! too happy to endure!
  Such simple sports our plain forefathers knew:
No splendid vices glitter’d to allure;
  Their joys were many, as their cares were few.

From these descending, Sons to Sires succeed;
  Time steals along, and Death uprears his dart;
Another Chief impels the foaming steed,
  Another Crowd pursue the panting hart.

Newstead! what saddening change of scene is thine!
  Thy yawning arch betokens slow decay;
The last and youngest of a noble line,
  Now holds thy mouldering turrets in his sway.

Deserted now, he scans thy gray worn towers;
  Thy vaults, where dead of feudal ages sleep;
Thy cloisters, pervious to the wintry showers;
  These, these he views, and views them but to weep.

Yet are his tears no emblem of regret:
  Cherish’d Affection only bids them flow;
Pride, Hope, and Love, forbid him to forget,
  But warm his *****, with impassion’d glow.

Yet he prefers thee, to the gilded domes,
  Or gewgaw grottos, of the vainly great;
Yet lingers ’mid thy damp and mossy tombs,
  Nor breathes a murmur ‘gainst the will of Fate.

Haply thy sun, emerging, yet, may shine,
  Thee to irradiate with meridian ray;
Hours, splendid as the past, may still be thine,
  And bless thy future, as thy former day.

The mystifying howl is irksomely faint yet vividly heard,
Akin to orchestrated footsteps of the undetectable command
As the new dawn illuminates a smoldering fire beyond the horizon-
“A sign of human activity-but an awful omen to the warlord”
Legions called into action, and for every step they take, matter is drawn from the ether,
Waiting for the final caravan of conquest and conquer;
Do the militias now turn their swords into ploughshares to suffer?
When their enemies-without remorse-silently creep up on them in silence,
However the distant shuddery sound of their battle cry is harmless;
But is the shunned “death-valley” an inescapable companion anyway?
With strident herons flying high above the maze-like island…so forlorn!
These shameless war-warriors!
Heroes With-Out!
Villains With-In!
Unlike them-the countryman is truly so fortunate nonetheless;
He marvels at the innate splendor of the single showy tulip in the bucolic wilderness,
Although now the heathen intimidate his terrain amidst his recoil in resistance;

The characters of men and women under this impudent sentence
On the uniformity of fate, however gay were the earlier scenes…
This sense of the seasons and mortality-more tragic in great cities
With mortals forgetting it is superfluous to go in chase of nature’s thoughts;
She comes of her own free will in the passing shadows of the seasons!
The boastful soldier…
The learned doctor…
Footing out of the masses for the qualities they assume beyond the galaxies afar;
The qualities they assume are those that most men admire!
Their hypocrisy, bravery and ingenuity survives more
Even in times of turmoil and war-with satirized lies and rumors
“Giving praise to bloodshed?”
Since when has the sight of blood been a derisory affair?
What a horrific carnival of double standards of power;
No laughing matter!
Doubtless criticism-sinister in origin with a false swagger
Sharper now in the modest gestures preaching feminism
For if modern elegant ladies adorn their bravura torsos in red fashion
Why give acknowledgment to this same reddened “color of death!”

The new world is finally shedding off the aged navel scar
Releasing the “Mother-Principle” instinct to be mothered and to engender!
Are awakening sons of men along with their nations betokening universal grandeur?
These lions among ladies!
These foxes in the fight for freedom…
“The men of Marathon”
Ironists-commonly more “characters” than thinkers,
Irritated further by the hypocrisy than by the ideas of those they portray,
Blind to the verity that modern tolerance might seem to go further than that,
As vengeful souls vanquish and oppress their enemies by craft and deceit;
…if they thought it was a sin, they would not argue about such a mischievous plot.
Finally money has a power above
The stars and fate to manage love:
Whose arrows, Learned Poets hold,
That never miss, are tipped with Gold.

Why be a writer when you can be a poet?
Why tell someone you love them when you can show it?
You can write all you want and you can say all you want, but it doesn't matter if you can't have a love affair with your piece.
So let's make love and not war and not desecrate the name of peace in the name of war.
The only wars that ought the be waged are those against those who oppress.
Sadly those who oppress control the press.
This world is in distress.I am a convoluted manically depressed hyperactive mess.
I may be a nobody but my words will have an impact.
An impact on those who made a pact to protect us,
They will cower in fear at the boy with blood on his paper and ink in his heart.
AND HOW DARE THEY SAY THAT MY POETRY SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED ART!
I say we kickstart the next beatnik generation...
And give these kids, some true... motivation.

Here. Impress me.
Take your appearance and character
And put it under a stress sheet
It's light enough to ignore
But it keeps away the best heat
It puts up an impenetrable wall
Between where my head and my chest meet.
All the time I'm thinking
What's the way to best beat
This self consciousness we feel
It just seems to oppress me.

But what if I told you
That I'm really not that great
That everything about me
Is the thing that I most hate.
I get wrapped up in myself
And the status of my current state
All the while forgetting
That I don't determine my own fate.
See I don't have the power
To end or create
But I worry and I wonder
And by then it's too late.

See I wanna be impressive
I want people to know my face
When they think of success
I want them to think Sam Chase.
But it's not up to me
What ideas others embrace
No matter how much I try
It's their thoughts and their space.
I can't determine
What they think of my case
All I can change
Is the way I see my own face.

If I let others determine
The worth I see in myself
I might as well give up
Pack up life. Back on the shelf.
Finding worth in others
Is a sure ticket to hell
Cause I abandon who I am
My thoughts I never tell.
Until I pick up this pen
Let go of my shell
There's not a rope in the world
To pull me back from where I fell

So let's try this.

I'm gonna be someone different
Someone I've not been around you
You're gonna see some new things
My emotions might surprise you
You might think I'm weird
Because of the things that I do
But this is me.
I just never let it shine through.
Yeah I have my quirks
That I never show beside you.
Cause I've always been too worried
Too scared I'd be left behind you.

Not anymore.
No today I'm really me
What you get is what you get
What you see is all you'll see
I'm being really honest.
I'm focused on transparency.
I WANT you to see trough
See through to how I just
Be.
I'm not gonna hold back
I'm just gonna try to be free
So you do the same thing.
When I say here.
Impress me.

Old Elm that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many coloured shade
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made
While darkness came as it would strangle light
With the black tempest of a winter night
That rocked thee like a cradle to thy root
How did I love to hear the winds upbraid
Thy strength without while all within was mute
It seasoned comfort to our hearts desire
We felt thy kind protection like a friend
And pitched our chairs up closer to the fire
Enjoying comforts that was was never penned

Old favourite tree thoust seen times changes lower
But change till now did never come to thee
For time beheld thee as his sacred dower
And nature claimed thee her domestic tree
Storms came and shook thee with aliving power
Yet stedfast to thy home thy roots hath been
Summers of thirst parched round thy homely bower
Till earth grew iron—still thy leaves was green
The children sought thee in thy summer shade
And made their play house rings of sticks and stone
The mavis sang and felt himself alone
While in they leaves his early nest was made
And I did feel his happiness mine own
Nought heeding that our friendship was betrayed

Friend not inanimate—tho stocks and stones
There are and many cloathed in flesh and bones
Thou ownd a lnaguage by which hearts are stirred
Deeper than by the attribute of words
Thine spoke a feeling known in every tongue
Language of pity and the force of wrong
What cant assumes what hypocrites may dare
Speaks home to truth and shows it what they are

I see a picture that thy fate displays
And learn a lesson from thy destiny
Self interest saw thee stand in freedoms ways
So thy old shadow must a tyrant be
Thoust heard the knave abusing those in power
Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free
Thoust sheltered hypocrites in many an hour
That when in power would never shelter thee
Thoust heard the knave supply his canting powers
With wrongs illusions when he wanted friends
That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers
And when clouds vanished made thy shade ammends
With axe at root he felled thee to the ground
And barked of freedom—O I hate that sound

It grows the cant terms of enslaving tools
To wrong another by the name of right
It grows a liscence with oer bearing fools
To cheat plain honesty by force of might
Thus came enclosure—ruin was her guide
But freedoms clapping hands enjoyed the sight
Tho comforts cottage soon was ****** aside
And workhouse prisons raised upon the scite
Een natures dwelling far away from men
The common heath became the spoilers prey
The rabbit had not where to make his den
And labours only cow was drove away
No matter—wrong was right and right was wrong
And freedoms brawl was sanction to the song

Such was thy ruin music making Elm
The rights of freedom was to injure thine
As thou wert served so would they overwhelm
In freedoms name the little so would they over whelm
And these are knaves that brawl for better laws
And cant of tyranny in stronger powers
Who glut their vile unsatiated maws
And freedoms birthright from the weak devours

Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme—
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revelled in—
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope—that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope—O God! I can—
Its fount is holier—more divine—
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit
Bowed from its wild pride into shame
O yearning heart! I did inherit
Thy withering portion with the fame,
The searing glory which hath shone
Amid the Jewels of my throne,
Halo of Hell! and with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again—
O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The undying voice of that dead time,
With its interminable chime,
Rings, in the spirit of a spell,
Upon thy emptiness—a knell.

I have not always been as now:
The fevered diadem on my brow
I claimed and won usurpingly—
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Caesar—this to me?
The heritage of a kingly mind,
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind.
On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head,
And, I believe, the winged strife
And tumult of the headlong air
Have nestled in my very hair.

So late from Heaven—that dew—it fell
(’Mid dreams of an unholy night)
Upon me with the touch of Hell,
While the red flashing of the light
From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,
Appeared to my half-closing eye
The pageantry of monarchy;
And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar
Came hurriedly upon me, telling
Of human battle, where my voice,
My own voice, silly child!—was swelling
(O! how my spirit would rejoice,
And leap within me at the cry)
The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head
Unsheltered—and the heavy wind
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
It was but man, I thought, who shed
Laurels upon me: and the rush—
The torrent of the chilly air
Gurgled within my ear the crush
Of empires—with the captive’s prayer—
The hum of suitors—and the tone
Of flattery ’round a sovereign’s throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,
Usurped a tyranny which men
Have deemed since I have reached to power,
My innate nature—be it so:
But, father, there lived one who, then,
Then—in my boyhood—when their fire
Burned with a still intenser glow
(For passion must, with youth, expire)
E’en then who knew this iron heart
In woman’s weakness had a part.

I have no words—alas!—to tell
The loveliness of loving well!
Nor would I now attempt to trace
The more than beauty of a face
Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
Are—shadows on th’ unstable wind:
Thus I remember having dwelt
Some page of early lore upon,
With loitering eye, till I have felt
The letters—with their meaning—melt
To fantasies—with none.

O, she was worthy of all love!
Love as in infancy was mine—
’Twas such as angel minds above
Might envy; her young heart the shrine
On which my every hope and thought
Were incense—then a goodly gift,
For they were childish and upright—
Pure—as her young example taught:
Why did I leave it, and, adrift,
Trust to the fire within, for light?

We grew in age—and love—together—
Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather—
And, when the friendly sunshine smiled.
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven—but in her eyes.
Young Love’s first lesson is——the heart:
For ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,
When, from our little cares apart,
And laughing at her girlish wiles,
I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,
And pour my spirit out in tears—
There was no need to speak the rest—
No need to quiet any fears
Of her—who asked no reason why,
But turned on me her quiet eye!

Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove
When, on the mountain peak, alone,
Ambition lent it a new tone—
I had no being—but in thee:
The world, and all it did contain
In the earth—the air—the sea—
Its joy—its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure—the ideal,
Dim, vanities of dreams by night—
And dimmer nothings which were real—
(Shadows—and a more shadowy light!)
Parted upon their misty wings,
And, so, confusedly, became
Thine image and—a name—a name!
Two separate—yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious—have you known
The passion, father? You have not:
A cottager, I marked a throne
Of half the world as all my own,
And murmured at such lowly lot—
But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapor of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam
Of beauty which did while it thro’
The minute—the hour—the day—oppress
My mind with double loveliness.

We walked together on the crown
Of a high mountain which looked down
Afar from its proud natural towers
Of rock and forest, on the hills—
The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers
And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically—in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside
The moment’s converse; in her eyes
I read, perhaps too carelessly—
A mingled feeling with my own—
The flush on her bright cheek, to me
Seemed to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be
Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then,
And donned a visionary crown—
Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me—
But that, among the rabble—men,
Lion ambition is chained down—
And crouches to a keeper’s hand—
Not so in deserts where the grand—
The wild—the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look ’round thee now on Samarcand!—
Is she not queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling—her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne—
And who her sovereign? Timour—he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o’er empires haughtily
A diademed outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall’st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav’st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth—
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly—
And homeward turned his softened eye.
’Twas sunset: When the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev’ning mist
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, would fly,
But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What tho’ the moon—tho’ the white moon
Shed all the splendor of her noon,
Her smile is chilly—and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one—
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown—
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty—which is all.
I reached my home—my home no more—
For all had flown who made it so.
I passed from out its mossy door,
And, tho’ my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known—
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
An humbler heart—a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe—
I know—for Death who comes for me
From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar.
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro’ Eternity——
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path—
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,—
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt-offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellised rays from Heaven
No mote may shun—no tiniest fly—
The light’ning of his eagle eye—
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love’s very hair!

Whoe’er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;

Where’er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;

Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my absent kisses.

I wish her beauty,
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy tire, or glist’ring shoe-tie;

Something more than
Taffata or tissue can,
Or rampant feather, or rich fan;

More than the spoil
Of shop, or silkworm’s toil,
Or a bought blush, or a set smile.

A face that’s best
By its own beauty drest,
And can alone commend the rest:

A face made up
Out of no other shop
Than what nature’s white hand sets ope.

A cheek where youth
And blood with pen of truth
Write what the reader sweetly ru’th.

A cheek where grows
More than a morning rose,
Which to no box his being owes.

Lips, where all day
A lovers kiss may play,
Yet carry nothing thence away.

Looks that oppress
Their richest tires, but dress
And clothe their simplest nakedness.

Eyes, that displaces
The neighbour diamond, and outfaces
That sunshine by their own sweet graces.

Tresses, that wear
Jewels, but to declare
How much themselves more precious are;

Whose native ray
Can tame the wanton day
Of gems that in their bright shades play.

Each ruby there,
Or pearl that dare appear,
Be its own blush, be its own tear.

A well-tamed heart,
For whose more noble smart
Love may be long choosing a dart.

Eyes, that bestow
Full quivers on Love’s bow,
Yet pay less arrows than they owe.

Smiles, that can warm
The blood, yet teach a charm,
That chastity shall take no harm.

Blushes, that bin
The burnish of no sin,
Nor flames of aught too hot within.

Joyes, that confess
Virtue their mistress,
And have no other head to dress.

Fears, fond and flight
As the coy bride’s when night
First does the longing lover right.

Tears, quickly fled
And vain as those are shed
For a dying maidenhead.

Days, that need borrow
No part of their good morrow
From a forspent night of sorrow.

Days, that, in spite
Of darkness, by the light
Of a clear mind are day all night.

Nights, sweet as they,
Made short by lovers’ play,
Yet long by th’ absence of the day.

Life, that dares send
A challenge to its end,
And when it comes say Welcome Friend.

Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old winter’s head with flowers.

Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers
‘Bove all; nothing within that lours.

Whate’er delight
Can make day’s forehead bright,
Or give down to the wings of night.

In her whole frame
Have nature all the name,
Art and ornament the shame.

Her flattery
Picture and poesy,
Her counsel her own virtue be.

I wish her store
Of worth may leave her poor
Of wishes; and I wish—no more.

Now, if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her, whose just bays
My future hopes can raise,
A trophy to her present praise;

Her, that dares be
What these lines wish to see:
I seek no further, it is she.

’Tis she, and here
Lo! I unclothe and clear
My wishes’ cloudy character.

May she enjoy it,
Whose merit dare apply it,
But modesty dares still deny it!

Such worth as this is
Shall fix my flying wishes,
And determine them to kisses.

Let her full glory,
My fancies, fly before ye;
Be ye my fictions, but her story.

In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drown’d in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the passing bell doth toll,
And the Furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the priest his last hath pray’d,
And I nod to what is said,
‘Cause my speech is now decay’d,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When, God knows, I’m toss’d about
Either with despair or doubt;
Yet before the glass be out,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tempter me pursu’th
With the sins of all my youth,
And half damns me with untruth,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the flames and hellish cries
Fright mine ears and fright mine eyes,
And all terrors me surprise,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the Judgment is reveal’d,
And that open’d which was seal’d,
When to Thee I have appeal’d,
      Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

Dear Sanity,
In the night, I wake to find myself without your company, but the warmth of the chain about my neck keeps you at the forefront of my mind. The heavy links rake across my flesh searing your disapproval; pulling me to your ankles so that I might kiss them for mercy. Branded at the chest by this heart of yours, though, I am the very antithesis of your will. I was seduced by the comfort of your homogeneous masses and tempted by the fruits of my curiosity. Yet, it is through fire—the deep passions of my essence—that I will be reborn. And you, who I loved through the eyes of others, will HOWL at my betrayal! Then stand upon your mountain peak and bludgeon me with reason so that I might know what your light looks like.  

To what end? So that I might cling to this chain, this keepsake, which I did not need until you bestowed your judgment. Yes, judgment, though you would have me believe it is your friendship, your safety, your sympathy. Like the swelter of a thousand suns you oppress me saying, “Keep quiet your ***** yearning!” So who would know better, the hour of my discontent, than you who watches me, unblinking, during the day? It is here, at the tween of night, that I shed the scales from my eyes and throw off your burden of want—the goals for which you leave me always pining, but never appeased. Is this shirking to seek the dark? So be it. I will cloak myself in blood—for all that I am wrong—and dance in the pale light of the unassuming.
—Pandora

--------------------

And the faces of the homogeneous masses drew forthwith to witness dawn.

In a drawer,
There was found,
A locket with
A minor crown—

Of leaf: laurel,
And shaded night.

When opened up
All succumbed to fright.
For found inside
Was a broken light;

Pandora’s hope
Had lost the fight

Meanwhile the new-baptized, who yet remained
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen
Him whom they heard so late expressly called
Jesus Messiah, Son of God, declared,
And on that high authority had believed,
And with him talked, and with him lodged—I mean
Andrew and Simon, famous after known,
With others, though in Holy Writ not named—
Now missing him, their joy so lately found,
So lately found and so abruptly gone,                      
Began to doubt, and doubted many days,
And, as the days increased, increased their doubt.
Sometimes they thought he might be only shewn,
And for a time caught up to God, as once
Moses was in the Mount and missing long,
And the great Thisbite, who on fiery wheels
Rode up to Heaven, yet once again to come.
Therefore, as those young prophets then with care
Sought lost Eliah, so in each place these
Nigh to Bethabara—in Jericho                              
The city of palms, AEnon, and Salem old,
Machaerus, and each town or city walled
On this side the broad lake Genezaret,
Or in Peraea—but returned in vain.
Then on the bank of Jordan, by a creek,
Where winds with reeds and osiers whispering play,
Plain fishermen (no greater men them call),
Close in a cottage low together got,
Their unexpected loss and plaints outbreathed:—
  “Alas, from what high hope to what relapse                
Unlooked for are we fallen!  Our eyes beheld
Messiah certainly now come, so long
Expected of our fathers; we have heard
His words, his wisdom full of grace and truth.
‘Now, now, for sure, deliverance is at hand;
The kingdom shall to Israel be restored:’
Thus we rejoiced, but soon our joy is turned
Into perplexity and new amaze.
For whither is he gone? what accident
Hath rapt him from us? will he now retire                  
After appearance, and again prolong
Our expectation?  God of Israel,
Send thy Messiah forth; the time is come.
Behold the kings of the earth, how they oppress
Thy Chosen, to what highth their power unjust
They have exalted, and behind them cast
All fear of Thee; arise, and vindicate
Thy glory; free thy people from their yoke!
But let us wait; thus far He hath performed—
Sent his Anointed, and to us revealed him                  
By his great Prophet pointed at and shown
In public, and with him we have conversed.
Let us be glad of this, and all our fears
Lay on his providence; He will not fail,
Nor will withdraw him now, nor will recall—
Mock us with his blest sight, then ****** him hence:
Soon we shall see our hope, our joy, return.”
  Thus they out of their plaints new hope resume
To find whom at the first they found unsought.
But to his mother Mary, when she saw                        
Others returned from baptism, not her Son,
Nor left at Jordan tidings of him none,
Within her breast though calm, her breast though pure,
Motherly cares and fears got head, and raised
Some troubled thoughts, which she in sighs thus clad:—
  “Oh, what avails me now that honour high,
To have conceived of God, or that salute,
‘Hail, highly favoured, among women blest!’
While I to sorrows am no less advanced,
And fears as eminent above the lot                          
Of other women, by the birth I bore:
In such a season born, when scarce a shed
Could be obtained to shelter him or me
From the bleak air?  A stable was our warmth,
A manger his; yet soon enforced to fly
Thence into Egypt, till the murderous king
Were dead, who sought his life, and, missing, filled
With infant blood the streets of Bethlehem.
From Egypt home returned, in Nazareth
Hath been our dwelling many years; his life                
Private, unactive, calm, contemplative,
Little suspicious to any king.  But now,
Full grown to man, acknowledged, as I hear,
By John the Baptist, and in public shewn,
Son owned from Heaven by his Father’s voice,
I looked for some great change.  To honour? no;
But trouble, as old Simeon plain foretold,
That to the fall and rising he should be
Of many in Israel, and to a sign
Spoken against—that through my very soul                  
A sword shall pierce.  This is my favoured lot,
My exaltation to afflictions high!
Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest!
I will not argue that, nor will repine.
But where delays he now?  Some great intent
Conceals him.  When twelve years he scarce had seen,
I lost him, but so found as well I saw
He could not lose himself, but went about
His Father’s business.  What he meant I mused—
Since understand; much more his absence now                
Thus long to some great purpose he obscures.
But I to wait with patience am inured;
My heart hath been a storehouse long of things
And sayings laid up, pretending strange events.”
  Thus Mary, pondering oft, and oft to mind
Recalling what remarkably had passed
Since first her Salutation heard, with thoughts
Meekly composed awaited the fulfilling:
The while her Son, tracing the desert wild,
Sole, but with holiest meditations fed,                    
Into himself descended, and at once
All his great work to come before him set—
How to begin, how to accomplish best
His end of being on Earth, and mission high.
For Satan, with sly preface to return,
Had left him vacant, and with speed was gone
Up to the middle region of thick air,
Where all his Potentates in council sate.
There, without sign of boast, or sign of joy,
Solicitous and blank, he thus began:—                      
  “Princes, Heaven’s ancient Sons, AEthereal Thrones—
Daemonian Spirits now, from the element
Each of his reign allotted, rightlier called
Powers of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth beneath
(So may we hold our place and these mild seats
Without new trouble!)—such an enemy
Is risen to invade us, who no less
Threatens than our expulsion down to Hell.
I, as I undertook, and with the vote
Consenting in full frequence was impowered,                
Have found him, viewed him, tasted him; but find
Far other labour to be undergone
Than when I dealt with Adam, first of men,
Though Adam by his wife’s allurement fell,
However to this Man inferior far—
If he be Man by mother’s side, at least
With more than human gifts from Heaven adorned,
Perfections absolute, graces divine,
And amplitude of mind to greatest deeds.
Therefore I am returned, lest confidence                    
Of my success with Eve in Paradise
Deceive ye to persuasion over-sure
Of like succeeding here.  I summon all
Rather to be in readiness with hand
Or counsel to assist, lest I, who erst
Thought none my equal, now be overmatched.”
  So spake the old Serpent, doubting, and from all
With clamour was assured their utmost aid
At his command; when from amidst them rose
Belial, the dissolutest Spirit that fell,                  
The sensualest, and, after Asmodai,
The fleshliest Incubus, and thus advised:—
  “Set women in his eye and in his walk,
Among daughters of men the fairest found.
Many are in each region passing fair
As the noon sky, more like to goddesses
Than mortal creatures, graceful and discreet,
Expert in amorous arts, enchanting tongues
Persuasive, ****** majesty with mild
And sweet allayed, yet terrible to approach,                
Skilled to retire, and in retiring draw
Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets.
Such object hath the power to soften and tame
Severest temper, smooth the rugged’st brow,
Enerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve,
Draw out with credulous desire, and lead
At will the manliest, resolutest breast,
As the magnetic hardest iron draws.
Women, when nothing else, beguiled the heart
Of wisest Solomon, and made him build,                      
And made him bow, to the gods of his wives.”
  To whom quick answer Satan thus returned:—
“Belial, in much uneven scale thou weigh’st
All others by thyself.  Because of old
Thou thyself doat’st on womankind, admiring
Their shape, their colour, and attractive grace,
None are, thou think’st, but taken with such toys.
Before the Flood, thou, with thy ***** crew,
False titled Sons of God, roaming the Earth,
Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men,                  
And coupled with them, and begot a race.
Have we not seen, or by relation heard,
In courts and regal chambers how thou lurk’st,
In wood or grove, by mossy fountain-side,
In valley or green meadow, to waylay
Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene,
Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa,
Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more
Too long—then lay’st thy scapes on names adored,
Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan,                          
Satyr, or Faun, or Silvan?  But these haunts
Delight not all.  Among the sons of men
How many have with a smile made small account
Of beauty and her lures, easily scorned
All her assaults, on worthier things intent!
Remember that Pellean conqueror,
A youth, how all the beauties of the East
He slightly viewed, and slightly overpassed;
How he surnamed of Africa dismissed,
In his prime youth, the fair Iberian maid.                  
For Solomon, he lived at ease, and, full
Of honour, wealth, high fare, aimed not beyond
Higher design than to enjoy his state;
Thence to the bait of women lay exposed.
But he whom we attempt is wiser far
Than Solomon, of more exalted mind,
Made and set wholly on the accomplishment
Of greatest things.  What woman will you find,
Though of this age the wonder and the fame,
On whom his leisure will voutsafe an eye                    
Of fond desire?  Or should she, confident,
As sitting queen adored on Beauty’s throne,
Descend with all her winning charms begirt
To enamour, as the zone of Venus once
Wrought that effect on Jove (so fables tell),
How would one look from his majestic brow,
Seated as on the top of Virtue’s hill,
Discountenance her despised, and put to rout
All her array, her female pride deject,
Or turn to reverent awe!  For Beauty stands                
In the admiration only of weak minds
Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes
Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy,
At every sudden slighting quite abashed.
Therefore with manlier objects we must try
His constancy—with such as have more shew
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise
(Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wrecked);
Or that which only seems to satisfy
Lawful desires of nature, not beyond.                      
And now I know he hungers, where no food
Is to be found, in the wide Wilderness:
The rest commit to me; I shall let pass
No advantage, and his strength as oft assay.”
  He ceased, and heard their grant in loud acclaim;
Then forthwith to him takes a chosen band
Of Spirits likest to himself in guile,
To be at hand and at his beck appear,
If cause were to unfold some active scene
Of various persons, each to know his part;                  
Then to the desert takes with these his flight,
Where still, from shade to shade, the Son of God,
After forty days’ fasting, had remained,
Now hungering first, and to himself thus said:—
  “Where will this end?  Four times ten days I have passed
Wandering this woody maze, and human food
Nor tasted, nor had appetite.  That fast
To virtue I impute not, or count part
Of what I suffer here.  If nature need not,
Or God support nature without repast,                      
Though needing, what praise is it to endure?
But now I feel I hunger; which declares
Nature hath need of what she asks.  Yet God
Can satisfy that need some other way,
Though hunger still remain.  So it remain
Without this body’s wasting, I content me,
And from the sting of famine fear no harm;
Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts, that feed
Me hungering more to do my Father’s will.”
  It was the hour of night, when thus the Son              
Communed in silent walk, then laid him down
Under the hospitable covert nigh
Of trees thick interwoven.  There he slept,
And dreamed, as appetite is wont to dream,
Of meats and drinks, nature’s refreshment sweet.
Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their ***** beaks
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn—
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought;
He saw the Prophet also, how he fled                        
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper—then how, awaked,
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the Angel was bid rise and eat,
And eat the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.
Thus wore out night; and now the harald Lark
Left his ground-nest, high towering to descry              
The Morn’s approach, and greet her with his song.
As lightly from his grassy couch up rose
Our Saviour, and found all was but a dream;
Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked.
Up to a hill anon his steps he reared,
From whose high top to ken the prospect round,
If cottage were in view, sheep-cote, or herd;
But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw—
Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove,
With chaunt of tuneful birds resounding loud.              
Thither he bent his way, determined there
To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade
High-roofed, and walks beneath, and alleys brown,
That opened in the midst a woody scene;
Nature’s own work it seemed (Nature taught Art),
And, to a superstitious eye, the haunt
Of wood-gods and wood-nymphs.  He viewed it round;
When suddenly a man before him stood,
Not rustic a

We have come from such a long way, with so many ups and downs.  Never again do I want to see those days, where trouble was always around.
We have come from such a long way, being oppressed for the color of  our skin.  There should be no need, to start this evil cycle, all over again.
We now live in 2014, and not in the time of slaves.  Yet, we are still experiencing slave trafficking, here in these present days.
What gives men the right, to constantly want to oppress?  I believe it's because of the devil, and also of being possessed.  
God will not stand idly by, and watch us suffer from this sin.  He delivered us once before, and he will do it again.
By, Author & Poet, Sandra Juanita Nailing