Poppies blossom like open cuts.
Ripe and red, they fill the air
With a cloying sweetness
So potent anyone downwind
Must shut their eyes and breathe
Through open mouths.  Tasting
The breath of flowers, they grow
Nauseous and afraid.  

The fields sway in the hot breeze
Until they resemble an ocean aflame -
It is here, among these poppies, I have
Found the blood of the Earth.  
It is moist and toxic, an acid eating away the soles
Of all that wade through it.  
How many gaunt, pale bundles of bone
Rest below these soft, red petals?
No one dares to count.  

People do not fear such
Lovely things - if they’ve only seen
Pictures.  How nice it must be
To know nothing of poppies
But their color, their shape.  
They seem almost beautiful -
But you know better.

You have stood waist deep in the
Malignant fields, breathing the air
That slowed your limbs -
Turning your arms and legs into pendulums
Swaying to the beat of the buds
That encircle them -
Until you knelt, weighed down,
Nearly submerged by saccharine terrors,
And cried, hoping the water leaking from your heart
Would put out the fires you find yourself embracing.  
After all, during the darker hours
Any light is better than no light at all
(Or so something whispers in your tired ear).  

You know the horror of poppies -
But  still you have yet to plunge
Past the black eyes of those red beasts -
For when the wind blows clean, cold
Air to you what do you do?
You raise your arms and let yourself
Feel as though you can fly -
And one day…one day
You will look down
And see yourself above
A ground free of poppies.

"Oh yes, I went over to Edmonstoun the other day and saw Johnny, mooning around as usual! He will never make his way."
Letter of George Keats, 18--


Night falls; the great jars glow against the dark,
Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling snake,
Writhing eternally in smoky gyres,
Great ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn
Within them. So the Eastern fisherman
Saw the swart genie rise when the lead seal,
Scribbled with charms, was lifted from the jar;
And -- well, how went the tale? Like this, like this? . . .

No herbage broke the barren flats of land,
No winds dared loiter within smiling trees,
Nor were there any brooks on either hand,
Only the dry, bright sand,
Naked and golden, lay before the seas.

One boat toiled noiselessly along the deep,
The thirsty ripples dying silently
Upon its track. Far out the brown nets sweep,
And night begins to creep
Across the intolerable mirror of the sea.

Twice the nets rise, a-trail with sea-plants brown,
Distorted shells, and rocks green-mossed with slime,
Nought else. The fisher, sick at heart, kneels down;
"Prayer may appease God's frown,"
He thinks, then, kneeling, casts for the third time.

And lo! an earthen jar, bound round with brass,
Lies tangled in the cordage of his net.
About the bright waves gleam like shattered glass,
And where the sea's rim was
The sun dips, flat and red, about to set.

The prow grates on the beach. The fisherman
Stoops, tearing at the cords that bind the seal.
Shall pearls roll out, lustrous and white and wan?
Lapis? carnelian?
Unheard-of stones that make the sick mind reel

With wonder of their beauty? Rubies, then?
Green emeralds, glittering like the eyes of beasts?
Poisonous opals, good to madden men?
Gold bezants, ten and ten?
Hard, regal diamonds, like kingly feasts?

He tugged; the seal gave way. A little smoke
Curled like a feather in the darkening sky.
A blinding gush of fire burst, flamed, and broke.
A voice like a wind spoke.
Armored with light, and turbaned terribly,

A genie tramped the round earth underfoot;
His head sought out the stars, his cupped right hand
Made half the sky one darkness. He was mute.
The sun, a ripened fruit,
Drooped lower. Scarlet eddied o'er the sand.

The genie spoke: "O miserable one!
Thy prize awaits thee; come, and hug it close!
A noble crown thy draggled nets have won
For this that thou hast done.
Blessed are fools! A gift remains for those!"

His hand sought out his sword, and lightnings flared
Across the sky in one great bloom of fire.
Poised like a toppling mountain, it hung bared;
Suns that were jewels glared
Along its hilt. The air burnt like a pyre.

Once more the genie spoke: "Something I owe
To thee, thou fool, thou fool. Come, canst thou sing?
Yea? Sing then; if thy song be brave, then go
Free and released -- or no!
Find first some task, some overmastering thing
I cannot do, and find it speedily,
For if thou dost not thou shalt surely die!"

The sword whirled back. The fisherman uprose,
And if at first his voice was weak with fear
And his limbs trembled, it was but a doze,
And at the high song's close
He stood up straight. His voice rang loud and clear.


The Song.

Last night the quays were lighted;
Cressets of smoking pine
Glared o'er the roaring mariners
That drink the yellow wine.

Their song rolled to the rafters,
It struck the high stars pale,
Such worth was in their discourse,
Such wonder in their tale.

Blue borage filled the clinking cups,
The murky night grew wan,
Till one rose, crowned with laurel-leaves,
That was an outland man.

"Come, let us drink to war!" said he,
"The torch of the sacked town!
The swan's-bath and the wolf-ships,
And Harald of renown!

"Yea, while the milk was on his lips,
Before the day was born,
He took the Almayne Kaiser's head
To be his drinking-horn!

"Yea, while the down was on his chin,
Or yet his beard was grown,
He broke the gates of Micklegarth,
And stole the lion-throne!

"Drink to Harald, king of the world,
Lord of the tongue and the troth!
To the bellowing horns of Ostfriesland,
And the trumpets of the Goth!"

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
The drink-horns crashed and rang,
And all their talk was a clangor of war,
As swords together sang!

But dimly, through the deep night,
Where stars like flowers shone,
A passionate shape came gliding --
I saw one thing alone.

I only saw my young love
Shining against the dark,
The whiteness of her raiment,
The head that bent to hark.

I only saw my young love,
Like flowers in the sun --
Her hands like waxen petals,
Where yawning poppies run.

I only felt there, chrysmal,
Against my cheek her breath,
Though all the winds were baying,
And the sky bright with Death.

Red sparks whirled up the chimney,
A hungry flaught of flame,
And a lean man from Greece arose;
Thrasyllos was his name.

"I praise all noble wines!" he cried,
"Green robes of tissue fine,
Peacocks and apes and ivory,
And Homer's sea-loud line,

"Statues and rings and carven gems,
And the wise crawling sea;
But most of all the crowns of kings,
The rule they wield thereby!

"Power, fired power, blank and bright!
A fit hilt for the hand!
The one good sword for a freeman,
While yet the cold stars stand!"

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
The air was thick with wine.
I only knew her deep eyes,
And felt her hand in mine.

Softly as quiet water,
One finger touched my cheek;
Her face like gracious moonlight --
I might not move nor speak.

I only saw that beauty,
I only felt that form
There, in the silken darkness --
God wot my heart was warm!

Their shouts rolled to the rafters,
Another chief began;
His slit lips showed him for a ***;
He was an evil man.

"Sing to the joys of women!" he yelled,
"The hot delicious tents,
The soft couch, and the white limbs;
The air a steam of scents!"

His eyes gleamed, and he wet his lips,
The rafters shook with cheers,
As he sang of woman, who is man's slave
For all unhonored years.

"Whether the wanton laughs amain,
With one white shoulder bare,
Or in a sacked room you unbind
Some crouching maiden's hair;

"This is the only good for man,
Like spices of the South --
To see the glimmering body laid
As pasture to his mouth!

"To leave no lees within the cup,
To see and take and rend;
To lap a girl's limbs up like wine,
And laugh, knowing the end!"

Only, like low, still breathing,
I heard one voice, one word;
And hot speech poured upon my lips,
As my hands held a sword.

"Fools, thrice fools of lust!" I cried,
"Your eyes are blind to see
Eternal beauty, moving far,
More glorious than horns of war!
But though my eyes were one blind scar,
That sight is shown to me!

"You nuzzle at the ivory side,
You clasp the golden head;
Fools, fools, who chatter and sing,
You have taken the sign of a terrible thing,
You have drunk down God with your beeswing,
And broken the saints for bread!

"For God moves darkly,
In silence and in storm;
But in the body of woman
He shows one burning form.

"For God moves blindly,
In darkness and in dread;
But in the body of woman
He raises up the dead.

"Gracile and straight as birches,
Swift as the questing birds,
They fill true-lovers' drink-horns up,
Who speak not, having no words.

"Love is not delicate toying,
A slim and shimmering mesh;
It is two souls wrenched into one,
Two bodies made one flesh.

"Lust is a sprightly servant,
Gallant where wines are poured;
Love is a bitter master,
Love is an iron lord.

"Satin ease of the body,
Fattened sloth of the hands,
These and their like he will not send,
Only immortal fires to rend --
And the world's end is your journey's end,
And your stream chokes in the sands.

"Pleached calms shall not await you,
Peace you shall never find;
Nought but the living moorland
Scourged naked by the wind.

"Nought but the living moorland,
And your love's hand in yours;
The strength more sure than surety,
The mercy that endures.

"Then, though they give you to be burned,
And slay you like a stoat,
You have found the world's heart in the turn of a cheek,
Heaven in the lift of a throat.

"Although they break you on the wheel,
That stood so straight in the sun,
Behind you the trumpets split the sky,
Where the lost and furious fight goes by --
And God, our God, will have victory
When the red day is done!"

Their mirth rolled to the rafters,
They bellowed lechery;
Light as a drifting feather
My love slipped from my knee.

Within, the lights were yellow
In drowsy rooms and warm;
Without, the stabbing lightning
Shattered across the storm.

Within, the great logs crackled,
The drink-horns emptied soon;
Without, the black cloaks of the clouds
Strangled the waning moon.

My love crossed o'er the threshold --
God! but the night was murk!
I set myself against the cold,
And left them to their work.

Their shouts rolled to the rafters;
A bitterer way was mine,
And I left them in the tavern,
Drinking the yellow wine!

The last faint echoes rang along the plains,
Died, and were gone. The genie spoke: "Thy song
Serves well enough -- but yet thy task remains;
Many and rending pains
Shall torture him who dares delay too long!"

His brown face hardened to a leaden mask.
A bitter brine crusted the fisher's cheek --
"Almighty God, one thing alone I ask,
Show me a task, a task!"
The hard cup of the sky shone, gemmed and bleak.

"O love, whom I have sought by devious ways;
O hidden beauty, naked as a star;
You whose bright hair has burned across my days,
Making them lamps of praise;
O dawn-wind, breathing of Arabia!

"You have I served. Now fire has parched the vine,
And Death is on the singers and the song.
No longer are there lips to cling to mine,
And the heart wearies of wine,
And I am sick, for my desire is long.

"O love, soft-moving, delicate and tender!
In her gold house the pipe calls querulously,
They cloud with thin green silks her body slender,
They talk to her and tend her;
Come, piteous, gentle love, and set me free!"

He ceased -- and, slowly rising o'er the deep,
A faint song chimed, grew clearer, till at last
A golden horn of light began to creep
Where the dumb ripples sweep,
Making the sea one splendor where it passed.

A golden boat! The bright oars rested soon,
And the prow met the sand. The purple veils
Misting the cabin fell. Fair as the moon
When the morning comes too soon,
And all the air is silver in the dales,

A gold-robed princess stepped upon the beach.
The fisher knelt and kissed her garment's hem,
And then her lips, and strove at last for speech.
The waters lapped the reach.
"Here thy strength breaks, thy might is nought to stem!"

He cried at last. Speech shook him like a flame:
"Yea, though thou plucked the stars from out the sky,
Each lovely one would be a withered shame --
Each thou couldst find or name --
To this fire-hearted beauty!" Wearily

The genie heard. A slow smile came like dawn
Over his face. "Thy task is done!" he said.
A whirlwind roared, smoke shattered, he was gone;
And, like a sudden horn,
The moon shone clear, no longer smoked and red.

They passed into the boat. The gold oars beat
Loudly, then fainter, fainter, till at last
Only the quiet waters barely moved
Along the whispering sand -- till all the vast
Expanse of sea began to shake with heat,
And morning brought soft airs, by sailors loved.

And after? . . . Well . . .
The shop-bell clangs! Who comes?
Quinine -- I pour the little bitter grains
Out upon blue, glazed squares of paper. So.
And all the dusk I shall sit here alone,
With many powers in my hands -- ah, see
How the blurred labels run on the old jars!
***** -- and a cruel and sleepy scent,
The harsh taste of white poppies; India --
The writhing woods a-crawl with monstrous life,
Save where the deodars are set like spears,
And a calm pool is mirrored ebony;
***** -- brown and warm and slender-breasted
She rises, shaking off the cool black water,
And twisting up her hair, that ripples down,
A torrent of black water, to her feet;
How the drops sparkle in the moonlight! Once
I made a rhyme about it, singing softly:

Over Damascus every star
Keeps his unchanging course and cold,
The dark weighs like an iron bar,
The intense and pallid night is old,
Dim the moon's scimitar.

Still the lamps blaze within those halls,
Where poppies heap the marble vats
For girls to tread; the thick air palls;
And shadows hang like evil bats
About the scented walls.

The girls are many, and they sing;
Their white feet fall like flakes of snow,
Making a ceaseless murmuring --
Whispers of love, dead long ago,
And dear, forgotten Spring.

One alone sings not. Tiredly
She sees the white blooms crushed, and smells
The heavy scent. They chatter: "See!
White Zira thinks of nothing else
But the morn's jollity --

"Then Haroun takes her!" But she dreams,
Unhearing, of a certain field
Of poppies, cut by many streams,
Like lines across a round Turk shield,
Where now the hot sun gleams.

The field whereon they walked that day,
And splendor filled her body up,
And his; and then the trampled clay,
And slow smoke climbing the sky's cup
From where the village lay.

And after -- much ache of the wrists,
Where the cords irked her -- till she came,
The price of many amethysts,
Hither. And now the ultimate shame
Blew trumpet in the lists.

And so she trod the poppies there,
Remembering other poppies, too,
And did not seem to see or care.
Without, the first gray drops of dew
Sweetened the trembling air.

She trod the poppies. Hours passed
Until she slept at length -- and Time
Dragged his slow sickle. When at last
She woke, the moon shone, bright as rime,
And night's tide rolled on fast.

She moaned once, knowing everything;
Then, bitterer than death, she found
The soft handmaidens, in a ring,
Come to anoint her, all around,
That she might please the king.

***** -- and the odor dies away,
Leaving the air yet heavy -- cassia -- myrrh --
Bitter and splendid. See, the poisons come,
Trooping in squat green vials, blazoned red
With grinning skulls: strychnine, a pallid dust
Of tiny grains, like bones ground fine; and next
The muddy green of arsenic, all livid,
Likest the face of one long dead -- they creep
Along the dusty shelf like deadly beetles,
Whose fangs are carved with runnels, that the blood
May run down easily to the blind mouth
That snaps and gapes; and high above them there,
My master's pride, a cobwebbed, yellow ***
Of honey from Mount Hybla. Do the bees
Still moan among the low sweet purple clover,
Endlessly many? Still in deep-hushed woods,
When the incredible silver of the moon
Comes like a living wind through sleep-bowed branches,
Still steal dark shapes from the enchanted glens,
Which yet are purple with high dreams, and still
Fronting that quiet and eternal shield
Which is much more than Peace, does there still stand
One sharp black shadow -- and the short, smooth horns
Are clear against that disk?
O great Diana!
I, I have praised thee, yet I do not know
What moves my mind so strangely, save that once
I lay all night upon a thymy hill,
And watched the slow clouds pass like heaped-up foam
Across blue marble, till at last no speck
Blotted the clear expanse, and the full moon
Rose in much light, and all night long I saw
Her ordered progress, till, in midmost heaven,
There came a terrible silence, and the mice
Crept to their holes, the crickets did not chirp,
All the small night-sounds stopped -- and clear pure light
Rippled like silk over the universe,
Most cold and bleak; and yet my heart beat fast,
Waiting until the stillness broke. I know not
For what I waited -- something very great --
I dared not look up to the sky for fear
A brittle crackling should clash suddenly
Against the quiet, and a black line creep
Across the sky, and widen like a mouth,
Until the broken heavens streamed apart,
Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires,
Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God.
I lay there, a black blot upon a shield
Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held
Until I staggered up and cried aloud,
And then it seemed that something far too great
For knowledge, and illimitable as God,
Rent th

young red poppies
sparkle in the air
spring flair awakens
untangle their hair
then
poppies...poppies
everywhere

roses are red
violets are blue
but we both know
that’s not true

Roses are red
but violets aren’t blue
they’re violet which
is a different hue

plus, roses are red
but poppies are too
and poppies are better-
they remind me of you

poppies are red,
but what is blue?
I’ll get to the point
before I go coocoo

Poppies are red
violets aren’t blue
I just wanna say
I love you

As poppies drip blood red petals
Among the fields where souls do roam
A silenced voice, away from home
Buried deep with twisted metals

Khaki men, are dead and rotting
As poppies drip blood red petals
Overgrown with rats and nettles
Men and women stood reflecting

A resting place to end the fight
In peaceful slumber they settle
As poppies drip blood red petals
Weathered cadavers all bleached white

Depressions fade, vista settles
Bodies and branches both stripped bare
Once passionate men, showed they care
As poppies drip blood red petals.

© 27/6/2012

Come on ! Come on !
Let's go ! . . .
row upon row
do the red poppies grow

Red ! Red !
the petal fed
taken from the lives
of the young and dead

The white bones
bleached of dreams
and forgotten sins ,
everything

Row upon row
of white the markers go
drenched in poppies
the dead in red grow

Bleached bone dreams
no breath
no whispers of "dear"
that death's spear pierced

Their's , no longer
the years , the fears , and tears
where the red poppies grow
row upon row

Poppies abloom in memoriam.

Fields content of the past.

Storms brewing above.

To renew them once again.

Memories of battle, scars on the earth.
Revealed once again.

In the fields.

It was the poppies to bloom

In memoriam.

No one calls me by name anymore
I'm the Poppy Man to most
At least that's how most folks know me

I've been selling poppies for the legion
Since 1946
Let's see...yep...it was 46
Went over in 43 at 17 years of age
Home in 45, and yep...46
Same spot too.
There's been two owners here at Danny's. Funny thing though....
neither was called Danny. Turns out Danny was the brother of the original owner, got shot down over Germany, so they named the place after him.
I guess that's why they let me come here and sell poppies every year.

Good thing.
Now, I'm getting up there, they let me sit inside the door. Have a nice little table for myself, and they keep my cup full.
I start selling November 1st, at precisely 11 o'clock. That's just the way it should be....11 o'clock.

Over the years, I've put up with wind, rain, snow and I've always held my post. Lost a few poppies in the wind one time, and the funny thing was...people came and paid me for them afterwards. Told me they found them blowing up the street, figured they were mine. Funny things that people do.

I'll tell you 'bout the name The Poppy Man. It started in 1952. A young mother and her daughter were inside having lunch, and I heard the daughter going on about saving change for the Poppy Man. I guess, I was the Poppy Man.
One of the waitresses put a sign up by the register saying "don't forget to save your change for The Poppy Man"....and it's kinda stuck.
That little girl came back every day with her mother, dropped her pennies in and saluted. You know the way kids do...hand open and all. I guess I owe the name to her.
I've collected lots of memories over the years, most of which I can only smile about now. If I start talking about them, I'd just tear up and you wouldn't get the whole story...so, I'll keep them to myself.
I'm a bit of a celebrity in these parts I guess.
Teachers bring their classes to me, every year to get their poppies. They always send me nice letters too, saying thanks Poppy Man. Cute little drawings, and big printing. Nowadays, I appreciate the big printing more and more.
Over the years, I've collected pennies, dimes, nickels, the usual suspects, bus tickets, candy wrappers, subway tokens, whatever someone had in their pocket at the time. I've seen it all in my tin.
The last few years, I guess since about 1997 or so, the cadets send someone down to stand with me for a while during my stint here.
Good kids mostly, dedicated, and with the same determined look I think we all had back in 43 when I went over.
Most of us didn't make it back, I'm one of the lucky ones. Some who did, never came back right if you know what I mean. But, that's all I'm gonna say about that.
There's only 5 of us left now from the old regiment. I can still see their faces when I shut my eyes....young, virile, strong. I miss them all.
I guess that's why I do it. Sell the poppies every year. It's for them. And for the new kids. New soldiers, new wars, it never changes in that way...just a different style of fighting.
Every now and then though, you know I hear that old bugler tuning up his bugle, and I think "not yet...I'm not ready to have The Last Post played for me"...."not yet".
So, that's about it for me, The Poppy Man....everyone knows me, and I'm easy to find ....just head to Danny's, I'll be at the table at the front.
Don't forget now....save your change for the poppy man.

Pretty poppies
And burnt earth for horizons
Crackling savage against the cool blue
That burns you without and tightens within
Endless green and poppies

I wish I spoke like you,
In red earth, pebbles spilling from my grin
Able to lie as much as gabble
And taste the impatient air
The scent of expectant poppies

Hurriedly, I'd rush back there
And feel the emptiness apart from me again,
That kind of emptiness that lends itself to
An adventure in you
And blushes
Like poppies blush
In turbulent valleys of burnt dirt

Parable Megaron Dodeká Spathiá: “Procorus perceptibly saw how the sky of Patmos was crossed by heavy metalloids of bronze, tin, and acrobalistics; for the cavalry of Kanti and his six Para Sinuses appeared who used to ride on the roof of the Megarons belling in the sounds of the acroteras. In these episodes, in twelve Swords that multiplied in advance by thousands, before the Megaron began to be built. In relevant and virtual dimensions, foundation lines, acrostics of Thessalian steeds on their palfrey, mounted Polish Winged Hussars, carrying twelve armor wings with twelve horsemen, adjoining the halo of heavy cavalry in Katyn, being abducted by a circum-regressive parapsychological Ellipsis of the 1939 event in Poland. Each rider was skewered in blood with golden wing feathers. In each of their hands, they carried the curved sword Szabla, to conceal the tacit target of oppressors and musketeer intruders from the armory hearth of the hypothetical-unknown enemy but if outsider, assaulting the flanks of the rooftops in the Virtual Megaron of Patmos, using Kopias or pikes that schemed on the impulses of deadly resistance and betrayed ancestry. On the roof that pointed to the southwest, the light of Orion was reflected by aerial forms of the Orpheum in the Aegean, riding on the high seas with the Exvotos or offerings of Cyclamen and Red Poppies, looming in majesty and in their nomadic obtuse compass of the Rapsodas Orpheming epic elegies, of those venerable and revived triumphs that were stretched out on the banner of glory and on the bed of epiphany.

Rapsoda proclaims like this: “In Katyn Wings of Golden Wood and Red Poppy, they adorned themselves with Bellis Perennis in twelve thousand rags, in our steppes harassing their wailing in blood wars, framed in large sections on the thresholds of the threshold of their mounted war. There were twelve thousand red poppies burning on the executory pilaster near Smolensk"

How much there is to be fed up in the Polish cavalry of the seventeenth century, that, upon glimpsing of barbarous sounds, the temple approached the altar of the Virtual Megaron, shining in acquiescent ceremoniality and counter-revolution of bloodless aristocracy in needy portals-living and mortals- living creatures, who posed in the rear of twelve thousand slain officers in Katyn Forest, like gentle medieval men in the contemporary untimely invasion. Here, in this place, the winged horsemen, snorted were by fate when they were sacrificed, like steel cushions galloping on their heads and sheltered by brotherhoods of Hussars that protected them with their lion and tiger breastplates with deterred claws.

Procorus, observed in the virtuous imaginography as medieval winged specimens, protected the frontispiece of the Megaron, in a battered super existence and trance of historical architectural pavement. Here on Patmian soil, each of the officers who was assisted by each Polish cuirassier of the 17th century with fierce wings, they were making them agonize with honor and glory, with those similar twice right there in their likeness, with interwoven discrepant blood fogging and executing apocryphal witnesses who covered their faces, overflowing evasion and delays of bodies stained with mourning and grief, in quilts of red poppies scattered and bordering a naive disarmed forest. On exalted memorandums and with secret cries of Adrastea procreating with the nymphs of her kind, they drowned the cry of cuirassiers like Didaskein, before sobbing on their topic, but of Pashkein in the foliage of the putrid hopes, of those who beat them for the back, in analogous vexation to Katyn's heroes. Here neither Crones nor Mother Rea heard them, only Adrastea prevented the cries of the men-children who were atoned for their backs; unburden them of the foliage of the Didaskein-Pashkien, in tears of solid mercury. Kanti's steeds rise up, carrying them the curved Zsabla sabers, before each is shot in the head, in the manner of twelve thousand Winged Horsemen caught in each Zsabla. These sacrificed them before they were killed at the waist of their head, not being expired by bullets, rather by sabers of honor and glory of their own winged protectors that would lead them by sharp weapons towards the holocaust of the Mashiach surrounded by red poppies.

“The red and fiery mist of the forest led the souls of the Hussars to pass through the sabers of their compatriots before they were slain by the Soviets, so their apostolate souls will be catechized by Zsablas of air stained of Red Poppies turned into the air of respite from the heroes of Katyn Forest, redeemed by the Golden-Winged Horsemen of the 17th Century ”

(Procorus in the immensity of the voices and epithets that were heard and differed in the volatile and explosive sabers metals, at present they were extinguished in their crooked breastplates and in their Polish beings, in the rear that finally Procorus settled them in warps of immaculate habit, suspended in twelve thousand Red Poppies crossed by their forehead, before being shot in the cortex and occipital lobe, forging themselves in the golden sabers and of transvestite cenobites who received them in their arms in the sublime stench of the effluvium of their blood and their hosts, never left and desisted of the bubbling by the figures of the acroteras near the Megaron, idem in the same Katyn Forest, surrounded in a string of the Rosary that was splendid in Procorus prohibiting them)

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker.  I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames.  Nothing burns

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little ****** skirts!

There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! -
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless.  Colorless.

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS THE POPPIES BLOW*

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Here my comrades and I are laden
We fought for King and Country
Here we are---the fallen.

‘Be proud’, was the national proclamation
‘ You are the chosen’
We left home and our loved ones
Here we are—the ill-begotten.

Some of us  once upon glorious corridors
Of Cambridge and Oxford had trodden
The best and most fertile of young minds
Here we are—the forgotten.

How strong we then were, riding on the back of youth
Its dreams so sweet and resplendent
Rained by bullets in the battlefield
Here we are---death has spoken.

Pro patria gloria, dulcis pro patria mori
(Never mind if our hearts were cruel and rotten
We must **** all enemies  over the fence)
Here we are---the terrible  who were chosen.


Were we born to destroy and mutilate?
But in the battle-front ---all we loved and espoused had been stolen  
Buried in dark pits of hate and revenge
There we were----inhuman and despondent.

Those whom we slaughtered and maimed
Didn’t they like us once did hold dreams just as golden?
Weren’t they who happiness sought as we did?
Here we are—to bemoan all the precious from such that had been stolen.


In Flanders fields the poppies weep
For us who are far from home and have nowhere to return
With the wind’s nightly melancholic sighs whispering in our ears
Here we are----empty,  with dark sins upon us—for absolution is all we yearn.

• inspired by the opening line of John McCrae’s poem IN FLANDERS FIELDS   published in December 1915 (Flanders is in Belgium where a million died or were maimed).

John McCrae (1872—1918) was a Canadian doctor who joined the army as a gunner but later transferred to the medical service.
IN 1918 he was made consultant to all the British armies in France
but died of pneumonia before taking up the appointment.

Red Poppies grow
Upon lapels
Telling of
War's untold hell

Of green hills
Pristine and groomed
Marching crosses
On the tombs

Marching crosses
Star of David
Where Stars and Stripes
Fluttered and wav'ed

Of buddies lost
Buried in cairns
Of brothers. Sisters.
Thus disarmed.

Of need for morphine
To end the pain
Of bandages
To staunch red stains

To honor souls
Under white snow
Upon lapels
Red Poppies grow.


SoulSurvivor
(C) 5/29/2016

I painted some poppies a year ago,
long-headed, red as the watery sun
that floats in the Bay at evening.
A girl I knew asked for the painting,
and I said yes, it was hers.
Then her silence gulped months away
in great raw swallows.
One day my phone shook in my hand,
and the girl who wanted poppies was there.

By then I was alone, in an abyss,
so I was ready to answer a voice
that drifted down in flurries.
She sang jazz across the city
into my pressed left ear,
and I opened to her
like a drawer full of old knives.

I tried to embrace it
but it wasn't two weeks
until I was in bed,
staring at the wall
where the poppies hung,
long-headed,
red as the watery sun
drowning in the Bay.

Little red poppies,
all lined up by the wooden tracks

Little red poppies,
all stirred up by the passing Soviet train

Little red poppies,
all picked up by the children who carelessly played

a little girl ran across a field of sunflowers.
when she reached the end of it,
she was met with a much older pure being.

“what lies beyond, God?”
“what lies beyond sunflowers,
are moon poppies my dear.
moon poppies are eternal, ever blooming.
they don’t belong on Earth,
only here, at the end of the line.
moon poppies are prettier than the moon!
might even compete with your eyes,
and the song you were singing yesterday.
would you like to see one?”

“must i die to see a moon poppy, Eternal one?”
“yes.
come, i’ll show you around.”

She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
In a loose white gown she walks
          and a new child tugs at cords in her body.
Her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping,
A shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber:
She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.

We did not come here on the orders of others
We came freely, our own choice, blown by the soft winds
scattered o'er many a mile
Landed upon Flanders Fields and rested a while

Then death came, disturbed the earth
Destruction hit the ground in which we slept so quietly
Awoke us from our slumber sweet
To witness tragedies and defeat

Now we are risen
and in our place beneath lie men and boys of courage, strong and true
Who fought valiantly but now lay slain
Our gentle roots entwine around their bodies that remain

Each dawn we wake for them and face the summer sun
At night our gaze doth meet moon
We stand tall and proud and dip our heads
And honour them that lie beneath with our petals red

Poppies...

Fields of red.
Memories of unrelenting dread.

Poppies...

Pillows of consequence, of loss
of love.
A memoir to our mistakes.
And fury.

Poppies...

Fields I tread.
Resting place of the dead.
Blood of a thousand stain their leaves,
little embodiments of death -
little life thieves.

Live off the deceased,
beautiful scavengers -
some drink their juices, liquid energy.
Liquid Poison.

Poppies,
pure poison in its rawest form,
***** field of heaven
conflict field of the past,
present
and future.

Stick it in a needle,
give it a shot -
but remember, these plants
grow on bodies that still rot.

Why are you looking at me like that?
'So one day this tenebrous look will repeat on you as an
unsheathed star, and in the aftermath of that
luminous wound all the angels of my intent
will leak therefrom.'
'Having seen--your heart will assume that wound,
and my music will come out of your eyes!'
A music whose movements constrict, a time-lame
twine only a serpent may undo--you knew!
How went the all, how went its nothing...that diabolical tune?
I hear it through feeling, it's so haunting I look over shoulders
I never knew I had.
You left panning cameras half-blind, live with feed, to every
nuanced detail.
Your minute release of messianic trailers doomed to never premiere,
neglecting to bow your head, and proclaim: It Is Finished...)))
It was more than the lay of the land, such was your art of survival,
hence war.
It's messier than they story--when two human beings come together,
what's gospel cross references  googleplexes...all but to betray a lack
of designation...human, being?
The poppies are everywhere, I stuff their dreams!
I see hearts skewering hearts--lights out, lights in...their
truest sutra: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form."
Our decline was so steady, you said you saw the beauty in ugly...
so now we're both transfixed in near catatonia.
The poppies are everywhere...I see you chopping off your locks
at odd angles, listening to Tori Amos--hoping they won't follow
you cursedly...your face waxed in eye-melt.
So erriely sentient, surfacing glimmers of nonlocal breaks of news.
You roared down that Kansas highway, one foot on gas, the other on
dashboard...that flat, unending highway where we saw the eastern
sun set, catching our dust-black wind as detracted distance.
Where: "kyrie elieison, down the road we must travel" sooth-said through the radio...ahead, the poppy-pigmented end of the line,
warning the last of the sun sets west.
That night when we retired to that Kansas motel, we were never
more parched in our lives.
Yes, and like the pickled western crawlers you can purchase in some
gas stations...the devil was in the details, a poppy between his teeth.

Today, I fell into a dead stare on the sun, (unblinking) as I write this
the pen emerges from a neon-green orb, blotting letters.
As this sight settles...I will like to tell you how I saw the
sun rattle its rim, and flicker its pregnant bulges in messages,
that cradle ripples to havens of purity.
Today, here--now, the sun will set east nor west...with love, nor
hate.
The sun has set...the poppies pause for a moment of magnanimity.

“The brightness of the Zsablas came from the night sky, then began to fade at the end of the onslaught of winter first, her skewer has discovered her by comparing her current situation with what she had before when her light began to dim. They all look at her and attack with all her strength seeing the shine of the dazzling sword as great Heroy Ukrayiny. The bizarre were taken with visible return light and with arms attached to each other already fallen with their fingers on the hammer. The images reveal changes that occur in its star when seeing the breaking of its vain flood of flash, both in brilliance and in an apparent way to grumble from the peaceful pair of providences on the legs of the cavalry advancing without pair, nor stopping of escalation that occurred after the Bucha massacre. Four hundred corpses have appeared at the Kramatorsk station, such Soviet missiles killed more than fifty citizens of Volodymyr, such Those 48 words shocked the world”

Ellipsis Kramatorsk, April 13, 2022, day 48 of the invasion. Volodímir speaks: "Children, your mother will take care of you at the time of the great Mikaiyáh to bring you the divine grace of accompanying you with the Abba Pealim, who will embrace you like a calf in her lap, tearing himself apart from the loving mystery for your lives for when they all fall embraced"

Olena says: “My beloved sir! I know that at this time there will be the same oratory that we can be worth for your ineffable courage, for the court, and cultivate passion with the Polish Zsablas. Here you can feel your thundering through the mountains and valleys where we used to notice the unknown world, eating delicious Vergun and Babka in their warm houses. I will never change my verdict having met you at the Besarabsky festival, you approached and made the united noise of my outfit with the white coming of dawn and all week when it brushed against its worn floor. From now on, renowned as my alba skirt clothes, offer your smiling eyes with tunics and cloaks that dazzle those who celebrated electing me as princess of the harvest. Nothing else would make me be just your look if it weren't for the Albacete of my house with the parents. My hairstyle was adorned with rodents eating our bodies and outstanding ruby spikes of celestial falcons with Albi-yellow flags dazzling your company, settling in the front crown..., always your Olena at the highest altar next to Mikaiyáh.”

Volodímir modulates: “My children, life will continue to be good, I have you in my prayers where no compensation will change drug compounds for the ingenious desire to have you close to me as hussars and their Zsablas. I have been reborn, I continue to feel my flesh and body on fire for you. I know that in Mariupol I will pacify attire, ****** attachments will not stop moving my legs to offer your help. But I will not get tired of moving against the sun and against the wind, of everything that I violated one day by seeing them between their open eyes hoping to help them. I will be with you, until the end, even if plundered forces profane illustrious missions beyond all life and bad outcome. In the silence of your calm words, the next day I will continue to exist with meager and magical words to the beat of your seasoning.”

Parable Bogdan Khmelnitskyi: “perceptibly saw how the sky of Kyiv was crossed by heavy metalloids of bronze, tin, and acrobalistics; for the cavalry and six warriors who used to ride on the roof of the Záratos appeared, belling with sounds in their acroteries. In these episodes, twelve swords were multiplied in advance by thousands before the palace began to be built after its ruins. They were dimensions of relevant victorious cavalry and virtual foundation lines to rescue the Heroy of Mariupol. Acrostics will pass through the steeds of Thessaly, riding on the palfrey of the Polish Winged Hussars, charging twelve wings of cuirassiers with twelve horsemen in adjoining halos of heavy cavalry at Katyn, lying abducted by a parapsychological and circum-regressive ellipsis of the 1939 event in Poland. Each rider was strung in blood with golden wing feathers from a Raptor game bird. Each of the wings carried the curved Szabla saber, to tacitly cover up oppressors and intruding musketeers from the hearth of the armory of the hypothetical or unknown enemy, but an outsider assaulting the flanks of the rooftops in the Mariyinsky Palace…, virtual of Kyiv. , using Kopias or pikes that concocted impetus as deadly resistance of the lineage betrayed in Hellenic, London, and Berlin museums. The roof pointed to the southwest where the light of Orion was reflected by the aerial forms of the Orfeón de Azov, riding over the high seas with votive offerings or offerings of Cyclamen and Red Poppies sifted to Silbones and Spoonbills birds that flew majestically in the nomadic rhythm of a Rhapsodas, coffering with epic elegies of Mariyinsky, and of those revived venerable triumphs that stretched out from the banner of glory and bed of the epiphany of Ukraine with the brave victors.

Rhapsode proclaims thus: “In Katyn, Polish Wings and Golden Woods with Red Poppies, adorned Bellis Perennis in twelve thousand rags of our steppes harassing their moan in blood offensives, framed in great chapters and threshold lintels in their mounted war. There were twelve thousand red poppies burning from the executory pilaster near Smolensk.” How much must he get fed up with the Polish cavalry of the 17th century, when he glimpses barbarous sounds in the temple that approached them to the altar of the Virtual Palace, showing off an acquiescent ceremonial and lifeless aristocracies, with living needy and vanquished mortals who posed in the rear of twelve thousand officers slain in the Katyn Forest assisting nine thousand of the slain in Mariupol, like gallant gentiles and medieval men of the contemporary untimely invasive. Here in this place, the winged horsemen with puffs went by their destiny to be sacrificed in steel quilts that galloped on their heads protected by brotherhoods and Hussars who protected them with Tiger and Lion breastplates with their retracted claws. Bogdan Khmelnitskyi watched in the virtuous image of him as winged medieval specimens protected the frontispiece of the palace in bullets of super-existence, fear, and historical trance. Here on this ground each one of the officers was aided by each 17th-century Polish cuirassier with ferocious wings, they were making their dying honor and glory with those similar, twice right there inequality and interwoven misty discrepant blood executing with apocryphal witnesses that covered them with sinister appearance, overflowing evasion and truce of bodies stained in mourning with disconsolate blankets carrying scattered red poppies adjoining a naive defenseless forest. About exalted memorandums, secrets, and epithets they felt in the tears of Adrastea next to Mikaiyáh.

Eagles of Kyiv will go to act of the spell of Didraskein, where no Slavic invaders and lethal punishments will be spared. The nymphs procreated their kind, the Slavs would drown in the cries of cuirassiers like Didraskein, before sobbing in platitudes of foliage and rotten hopes of those who hit them from behind, for a little water wasted such as heroes of Katyn. Here neither Cronus nor Mother Rhea heard them, only Adrastea avoided the cries of men-children and of those who atoned for her back, unburdening them from the foliage of the Didraskein with tears of lumpy mercury. Volodymyr's steeds rise carrying the curved Zsabla, before each one is shot in their heads as twelve thousand Winged Riders caught in each Zsabla plus nine thousand immolated from Mariupol, sacrificing them before they were killed from the waist of their head lost in loved ones, not being expired by ammunition, rather by sabers of honor and glory of their own winged protectors that would lead them by sharp weapons towards the holocaust surrounded by red poppies. “The red fog of the forest carried the souls of the Hussars by passing them through the sabers of their compatriots before they were immolated by Soviets, in this way apostolates and souls would be catechized by Zsablas in dyed airs of Red Poppies converted into the breathed air of the heroes of the Katyn Forest and Mariupol, seeing themselves redeemed by the 17th Century Golden-Winged Riders of Poland and Adrastea”

Bogdan with the immensity of voices and epithets heard Adrastea, she differed from volatile metal sabers, and explosives present when they went out in the crooked armor of Polish and Ukrainian beings, in a rear that Volodymir finally settled with the weave of the immaculate suspended habit of twelve thousand Red Poppies crossed by their forehead before being shot in the cortex, and occipital lobe forging with transvestite golden sabers, and cenobites that received them in the arms of the sublime stench of the effluvium of blood and hosts of nine thousand from Mariupol, never left and desisted from the bubbling figure of the acroteria near Mariyinski, idem to the Katyn Forest itself, surrounded in a string of the Rosary that was dazzled with Saint Sophia adopting them.

Fourteen vibrations of enthronement polarized from Volodímir instantly to his brother Bógdan, making filial gradation in the possible conception of cult and death who is suspended from one to the other under a damning accent of past lives. It is typical of the facsimile of his own genetic shadow, perhaps of Sem-Asur, who finally come together as blood relatives of the same Orbis Alius trunk. Rejecting not accessing Asur (as a healthy creative mind of Genesis) as an energy that could be restructured in any homologous of the world of Asur, as the son of Shem of Genesis..., as compared and inter-generational real mythology, pronouncing and enlivening in metaphors of the enchantment of what occurs in gender similarity or Mental field. The compensation and intemperance of living matter refer to the simultaneous undivided of each civilization as a phenomenon devoid of hearing and inclement winter periods. Here the outbreak lies cloistered in Menatira, daughter of Cránae, Queen of Eleusis Pro-Ukrania; such as a fluff of respite convulsing in both steppes of silence and hundreds of years B.C. prophesying to send aid to the victors of Volodymyr, Olena, Bógdan and the heroes of Mariupol with the Zsablas of Mikaiyah.

Normally red, flame like. Petals caress, and wither,
And fall. The dizzying peace in the slumber it brings,
The drug that sings an Angel's lullaby, tosses you into the toy box like another rag-doll.
We've fallen for it again. The dusty dolls and
Hollow plastic telephones that hold spider eggs are the only companions now.
But I am here. And I am your friend.
Although I can not make any promises that I am beautiful, I will be as pretty as I can;
I will wear dresses and makeup.
My scars are not covered, they show and glow like luminescent tattoos etched into my skin.
Do you have any ink? Did your feather pen spill over the page, erasing your work?
Did the charcoal reflection ******* over and stain your perfect self?
Of course it did. That is what happens when the desk you write on is slanted, demented,
But it seems to be your twin.

Your mind is not a place of blazing meteors, honey. It's a place of evil things.

You are a twisted little *****, but so am I, you see. We have both taken the wrong path,
The only difference: I know how to survive. How to fool the monsters under the bed into thinking
I am one of them. In a way, I might even be telling the truth. I painted my own mask:
A splash of black here, a drop of blood there, and... Something is missing, but they won't notice.
They will always let me dance with them around their moonlit blue flames; I am their queen,
My mask, to them is beautiful. And they understand the me that I have fabricated to escape
The wretched toy box on the other side of the bedroom, over the mountains of ***** socks and
Dusty snow globes, even if a part of me is not complete.
I am still stuck in that box long after the room rotted away, the box melted in the
Sunlight and every speck of dust swept away by the wind and rain.
But at least more of the black poppies can grow.
Normally red, flame like. Petals caress, and wither,
And fall. The dizzying peace in the slumber it brings, leaving everyone who slips the glass pill
Comatose in a hospital bed, tubes shoved down their throat to keep from asphyxiating.
No matter how many visitors come to read stories and play songs on the ukulele,
They will remain dormant. They are not longer home, so stop ringing the bell.

No, I take that back.
Ring the death bell one more time, invite everyone to the land of green grass and marble sculptures;
Tell them to bring poppies because it was the deceased's favorite flora,
But neglect to say which color. The visitors bring red,
An alien on the color spectrum and unrecognized by the ghost atop the gravestone.

Still, the dull color matches the spatter of blood on the mask I once wore, and I am brought back
A hologram, of sorts. The bowed heads below me are too dense to look up, except for one.
It's you, love. You grew the flowers that put me there.
The dull color that hypnotized me night after night and made me dream of your body
Covered in the withered petals. You, love. My poppy dealer.

Freshly picked poppies
Under the tree
Carefully picked out just for you.
Knocked on your door

Yanking you from the floor
Over the hill
Under the tree

Around us were poppies chosen by me
Stunned by the beauty
Smokey bitter-sweet smell
‘Have a bite I promise it will taste lovely’
One bite is all it took for me to say farewell
Letting you walk away would not suffice
Eating the poppies and watching you suffer added a little spice

when life is quite through with
and leaves say alas,
much is to do
for the swallow,that closes
a flight in the blue;

when love’s had his tears out,
perhaps shall pass
a million years
(while a bee dozes
on the poppies, the dears;

when all’s done and said,and
under the grass
lies her head
by oaks and roses
deliberated.)

Inspired by: “Vase with Red Poppies”
Vincent Van Gogh (1886)*

Through teary eyes, a blur
of succulent fruit hangs
from ends of stems,

perhaps tomatoes ripe
for picking. Tomatoes
like the ones a mother

used to grow before she
died. The poppies seem
to conquer the whirlwind

storm of blue wallpaper
smudged in the background,
the color a father chose.

The table holds pieces
Of once living stems
that they could not put

back together. Some buds
haven't bloomed, and you
wonder if they'll ever.

Flanders fields evoke memories of the first war battles of Ypres and Paschendale where so many thousands gave their lives

Poppies grow on Flanders fields
Poppies deepest red
On those ****** battle fields
Where so much young blood was shed
Poppies,  poppies nurtured by the blood of boys
Poppies deep blood red
Thousands lift their heads towards the sky
Perhaps to glorify those boys who died
The poppy has four petals
One petal for every boy who died on those blood soaked fields
Petals red and whole nations grieved
And mourned the loss
Of youths not yet fully bloomed

Too late for love, too late for joy,
  Too late, too late!
You loiter'd on the road too long,
  You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
  Died without a mate;
The enchanted princess in her tower
  Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
  You made it wait.

Ten years ago, five years ago,
  One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in time,
  Though somewhat slow;
Then you had known her living face
  Which now you cannot know:
The frozen fountain would have leap'd,
  The buds gone on to blow,
The warm south wind would have awaked
  To melt the snow.

Is she fair now as she lies?
  Once she was fair;
Meet queen for any kingly king,
  With gold-dust on her hair.
Now there are poppies in her locks,
  White poppies she must wear;
Must wear a veil to shroud her face
  And the want graven there:
Or is the hunger fed at length,
  Cast off the care?

We never saw her with a smile
  Or with a frown;
Her bed seem'd never soft to her,
  Though toss'd of down;
She little heeded what she wore,
  Kirtle, or wreath, or gown;
We think her white brows often ached
  Beneath her crown,
Till silvery hairs show'd in her locks
  That used to be so brown.

We never heard her speak in haste:
  Her tones were sweet,
And modulated just so much
  As it was meet:
Her heart sat silent through the noise
  And concourse of the street.
There was no hurry in her hands,
  No hurry in her feet;
There was no bliss drew nigh to her,
  That she might run to greet.

You should have wept her yesterday,
  Wasting upon her bed:
But wherefore should you weep to-day
  That she is dead?
Lo, we who love weep not to-day,
  But crown her royal head.
Let be these poppies that we strew,
  Your roses are too red:
Let be these poppies, not for you
  Cut down and spread.

"Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate.
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.

"Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in time,
Though somewhat slow;
Then you had known her living face
Which now you cannot know:
The frozen fountain would have leaped,
The buds gone on to blow,
The warm south wind would have awaked
To melt the snow.

"Is she fair now as she lies?
Once she was fair;
Meet queen for any kingly king,
With gold-dust on her hair.
Now these are poppies in her locks,
White poppies she must wear;
Must wear a veil to shroud her face
Or is the hunger fed at length,
Cast off the care?

"We never saw her with a smile
Or with a frown;
Her bed seemed never soft to her,
Though tossed of down;
She little heeded what she wore,
Kirtle, or wreath, or gown;
We think her white brows often ached
Beneath her crown,
Till silvery hairs showed in her locks
That used to be so brown.

"We never heard her speak in haste;
Her tones were sweet,
And modulated just so much
As it was meet:
Her heart sat silent through the noise
And concourse of the street.
There was no hurry in her hands,
No hurry in her feet;
There was no bliss drew nigh to her,
That she might run to greet.

"You should have wept her yesterday,
Wasting upon her bed:
But wherefore should you weep to-day
That she is dead?
Lo we who love weep not to-day,
But crown her royal head.
Let be these poppies that we strew,
Your roses are too red:
Let be these poppies, not for you
Cut down and spread."

When I sleep dreams please take head
I’m not accustomed to this speed
spliced with music art and ****
this rhyme a warning and a plead:
Many men look back at me
their eyes memorize silently
I trade in who I used to be
degenerating empathy.
Friends no more are there as well
waving constantly farewell
who they are now I can’t tell
heavy water stains still dwell.
Though no longer what you were
your name a prayer spoken unsure
Instills the fact there is no cure
clear direction- violent blur;
I am a man and I’m a boy
both utensil and a toy
immoral morals, high decoy
let flirt with death, young cold and coy..
So please I beg you, dreams of pain
let sleep consume me, peace sustain
let night air fill my broken brain
through the wind myself retrain
        Let me wade in water deep,
    let my faith forwardly leap
worry sow and disdain reap

Troubled Poppies for Endless Sleep.

The best way to forget the truth is to celebrate the lie
Poppies poppies poppies POPPIES and a big brass band
sea cadets in my home town forty miles inland.
Please dont be swayed to get your feet wet dont be fodder for a war
And you will if you forget.

My mates grandads wife never got his war pension
he got shot on the wrong day
I think there was an R in the month or was it a why (Y)
there's a statue on top of our cenotaph  the Angel of the Somme
thee sea cadets parade around it tiddley um pum pum
Tiddley um pum pum
Pum pum pupum

The best way to forget the truth is  to forget the lie.

"Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate.
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.

"Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in time,
Though somewhat slow;
Then you had known her living face
Which now you cannot know:
The frozen fountain would have leaped,
The buds gone on to blow,
The warm south wind would have awaked
To melt the snow.

"Is she fair now as she lies?
Once she was fair;
Meet queen for any kingly king,
With gold-dust on her hair.
Now these are poppies in her locks,
White poppies she must wear;
Must wear a veil to shroud her face
And the want graven there:
Or is the hunger fed at length,
Cast off the care?

"We never saw her with a smile
Or with a frown;
Her bed seemed never soft to her,
Though tossed of down;
She little heeded what she wore,
Kirtle, or wreath, or gown;
We think her white brows often ached
Beneath her crown,
Till silvery hairs showed in her locks
That used to be so brown.

"We never heard her speak in haste;
Her tones were sweet,
And modulated just so much
As it was meet:
Her heart sat silent through the noise
And concourse of the street.
There was no hurry in her hands,
No hurry in her feet;
There was no bliss drew nigh to her,
That she might run to greet.

"You should have wept her yesterday,
Wasting upon her bed:
But wherefore should you weep to-day
That she is dead?
Lo we who love weep not to-day,
But crown her royal head.
Let be these poppies that we strew,
Your roses are too red:
Let be these poppies, not for you
Cut down and spread."

This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take
Yon creamy lily for their pavilion
Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake
A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,
His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old
Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold.

The wind the restless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina, one would say
The mighty master’s hands were on the keys
Of the Maria *****, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

Is not yon lingering orange after-glow
That stays to vex the moon more fair than all
Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago
I knelt before some crimson Cardinal
Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,
And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.

The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous
With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring
Through this cool evening than the odorous
Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,
When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine,
And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine.

Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass
Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird
Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass
I see that throbbing throat which once I heard
On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,
Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea.

Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves
At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold
And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.

And sweet with young Lycoris to recline
In some Illyrian valley far away,
Where canopied on herbs amaracine
We too might waste the summer-tranced day
Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,
While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot
Of some long-hidden God should ever tread
The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute
Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head
By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed
To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,
Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem!
Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler
Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn
These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,
For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield

Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose
Which all day long in vales AEolian
A lad might seek in vain for over-grows
Our hedges like a wanton courtesan
Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too
Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue

Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs
For swallows going south, would never spread
Their azure tents between the Attic vines;
Even that little **** of ragged red,
Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady
Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy

Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames
Which to awake were sweeter ravishment
Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems
Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant
For Cytheraea’s brows are hidden here
Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
The butterfly can see it from afar,
Although one summer evening’s dew could fill
Its little cup twice over ere the star
Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold
And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae
Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss
The trembling petals, or young Mercury
Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis
Had with one feather of his pinions
Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne’s silver tapestry,—
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river’s marge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love’s own sake to leave the other’s side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia’s bard

With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,
Queen Helen lying in the ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming with dainty hand his helmet’s plume,
And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,
As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword
Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,
And all those tales imperishably stored
In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich
Than any gaudy galleon of Spain
Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

For well I know they are not dead at all,
The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy:
They are asleep, and when they hear thee call
Will wake and think ‘t is very Thessaly,
This Thames the Daulian waters, this cool glade
The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played.

If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird
Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne
Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard
The horn of Atalanta faintly blown
Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering
Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring,—

Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate
That pleadest for the moon against the day!
If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate
On that sweet questing, when Proserpina
Forgot it was not Sicily and leant
Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment,—

Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!
If ever thou didst soothe with melody
One of that little clan, that brotherhood
Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany
More than the perfect sun of Raphael
And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Let elemental things take form again,
And the old shapes of Beauty walk among
The simple garths and open crofts, as when
The son of Leto bare the willow rod,
And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God.

Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here
Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne,
And over whimpering tigers shake the spear
With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,
While at his side the wanton Bassarid
Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid!

Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin,
And steal the mooned wings of Ashtaroth,
Upon whose icy chariot we could win
Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth
Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun
Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

Down the green valley where the fallen dew
Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew
Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,
And where their horned master sits in state
Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face
Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come,
The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase
Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,
And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,
After yon velvet-coated deer the ****** maid will ride.

Sing on! and I the dying boy will see
Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell
That overweighs the jacinth, and to me
The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,
And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,
And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

Cry out aloud on Itys! memory
That foster-brother of remorse and pain
Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free,
To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again
Into the white-plumed battle of the waves
And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves!

O for Medea with her poppied spell!
O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!
O for one leaf of that pale asphodel
Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,
And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she
Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased
From lily to lily on the level mead,
Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste
The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,
Ere the black steeds had harried her away
Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

O for one midnight and as paramour
The Venus of the little Melian farm!
O that some antique statue for one hour
Might wake to passion, and that I could charm
The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,
Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

Sing on! sing on!  I would be drunk with life,
Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

Sing on! sing on!  O feathered Niobe,
Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal
From joy its sweetest music, not as we
Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal
Our too untented wounds, and do but keep
Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and ****** pillowed sleep.

Sing louder yet, why must I still behold
The wan white face of that deserted Christ,
Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold,
Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,
And now in mute and marble misery
Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?

O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!
Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!
O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell
Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!
Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong
To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!

Cease, cease, or if ‘t is anguish to be dumb
Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,
Whose jocund carelessness doth more become
This English woodland than thy keen despair,
Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay
Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.

A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,
Endymion would have passed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had ****** aside the branches of her oak
To see the ***** gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke.

A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss
Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon
Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis
Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,
And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile
Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile

Down leaning from his black and clustering hair,
To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss,
Or else on yonder grassy ***** with bare
High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis
Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer
From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.

Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!
No more thou winged Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody

So sad, that one might think a human heart
Brake in each separate note, a quality
Which music sometimes has, being the Art
Which is most nigh to tears and memory;
Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?
Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here,

Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,
No woven web of ****** heraldries,
But mossy dells for roving comrades made,
Warm valleys where the tired student lies
With half-shut book, and many a winding walk
Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.

The harmless rabbit gambols with its young
Across the trampled towing-path, where late
A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng
Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;
The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,
Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds

Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out
Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock
Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout
Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,
And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,
And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.

The heron passes homeward to the mere,
The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,
Gold world by world the silent stars appear,
And like a blossom blown before the breeze
A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,
Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.

She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,
She knows Endymion is not far away;
’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed
Which has no message of its own to play,
So pipes another’s bidding, it is I,
Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.

Ah! the brown bird has ceased:  one exquisite trill
About the sombre woodland seems to cling
Dying in music, else the air is still,
So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing
Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell
Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell.

And far away across the lengthening wold,
Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,
Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold
Marks the long High Street of the little town,
And warns me to return; I must not wait,
Hark! ’Tis the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.

How we start is only part of what we eventually do.

Physically that's easy to see. Being human, adamkind,
we see weak starts often in life.
Colts or pups born a week too soon can be loved to lives as pampered pets,
Siring toys for the enjoyment of those who can afford to fuel them,
For generations, with never a single care,
Past that initial trauma and subsequent subjugation to the will of man.

I don't tell horse stories, dog stories or war stories, if I can keep from it.

But when you want to demonstrate the purest of payback,
revenge getting the bad guy in the end,
having a horse be the hero makes behaving like an animal
more noble to the mind of vengeful man.
It's not true, revenge being noble.
That's a very old lie.

Law is to prevent error by disallowing failure. Law.

Relative to the rest of God's creatures, we, adamkind, seem dependent, weak and vulnerable next to bears being weak
a way-less long time
Than we.
We come into this world weak as a baby anything and we stay that way longer
Than any living creature.

I am an American, by birth.
I was not born to a political party or a family with political roots,
"I ain't no Senator's son."
Still,
I was reared drinking mythic cherry wine
sprung from George's failure to lie
Regarding his woodman's knack with a hatchet.

Sitting on the fence rail Abe split,
town fathers where I lived
were said to have decided the most harmonious of towns
have only gainfully employed darker folks,
while white
trash was allowed to loll around because they was
some employer's kin by marriage.

It all seemed pretty normal, as a child.
The loller-arounders let kids listen when they told
Their friends, who could not read, what the newspapers said.

One block from my house there was a vet's and hobo's flop-house clad in corrugated tin, rusted-round the nail-holes all the way to the ground and the rust had spread, so at sunset,...
I only recall the single story shed having one door.
There were always old white men sittin' on the southside of the shed. At sunset, those old men's whispy white hair

appeared as white flowing mare's tale clouds under
a scab-red wall held up by old men with sunset shining faces...

It was a big shed, a low barn, a bunkhouse,
eight or ten 4-foot tin-sheets long on the north and south
Windowless walls.
The one door was on the south side.
Once I saw an old man selling red paper buddy poppies.
He was missing both legs about half-way up his thighs.
The poppy seller rode a square board that had what I think were
Roller-skates, the key-kind, with metal wheels about a 1/2 inch wide.
Nailed to it's bottom. He had handles made from a carpenter's saw
Without it's blade. He pushed himself with those handles.

That looked fun, to a four-year old.
It looks different now-a-days. Knowing
Those red poppies symbolized
The after math automatics of the war to end war.

Who knows the poppy-sellers son? He would be old.
Does he know how his father lost his legs, but lived?
Does he bear the curse of the curse that lost his father's legs?
Does he honor his father's cause or weep at the thought?

Enough is enough.
My family tree branched in America, but only one great grand-parent,
Three generations back from me, was rooted in this land.
My gran'ma's ma, a Choctaw squaw,
That rhymed fine,
But it's not true. My grandma did not know her parents. She was born an orphan,
And her father and mother were likely strangers.

1910 in southwest Arkansas or southeast Oklahoma or northeast Texas or northwest Louisiana
And the color of her skin is all that proved my American heritage.

My grandma was born poor as poor can be,
she never told me how she survived

To survive a 1925 or so car wreck
in eastern Arizona's white mountains.
I never asked what my grandmother knew,
nor how she came to know.

This is my point.
After you and I have gone into forever more,
Our great grand children may wonder
what we did or did not, since we
Are no longer around to give our account.

These days we can leave our story to our great grand children.
Our own children
And our grand children follow us on facebook back to before they were born.
Shall they judge us idlers wielding idle words for laughs,
or  think us knowers of all we found while seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven
In the place Jesus says it is. You know where Jesus said the Kingdom of our kind lies?

The double minded man is unstable in all his ways,
hence Eve and her broader bandwidth corpus colostrum
Come back later, there is a breath system upgrade evolving.

Such changes to the courage of the mind rolls out more slowly
to the root ideas, labouring to find sustenance,
it is a struggle being a radical idea,
we agree, but we have our part,
as do the flowers
and the spore.
Leaven the whole lump, like it or lump it.

The now we live in grew from far deeper roots than
the roots claimed by the
Self-identified nation through it's cartoons/representations of national desires to rally 'round the flag as if it were the fire,
those desires to herd beneath any shelter from the storm,
Your country, your incorporated allegiance
to the inventor and creator and counter of the money under
the protection of the sword and crown representative
of the flame that burns,
The namers of patriot, the rankeers of ideas
who, by their existence,
naturally, over rule you.
Such powers are granted by the individual, not the mob.
You get that?

The desires of the nation over rule the desires of the individuals who
Com-prize the nation.
Whose side are you on, dear reader?

Is the idea we believed believable?
Ex Nihilo, I don't think so because
I can't imagine how now could be
Accidental-ly.

When my hero wore spurs as he went from the jail office to
Miss Kitty's place, (Gunsmoke on A.M. radio)

What did Miss Kitty do?
I had no clue.
In my hero's world people never
Did the wrong thing
While Marshal Dillon was in Dodge.

So did you think Miss Kitty's place was anything other
than a culturally acceptable
reference to professional social ******* workers
under a strong, smart female CEO
with top-level links to the local cops?

All these are rhetorical questions, this being
Rhetorical if you are hearing me say this.
That means, don't nod or raise your hand or shout Amen, kin!

I see your answer my answer and
I know my answer, so you know my answer.

Step-back, 1961, USA Snapshot
Unitas, Benny Kid Perett, Mantlenmarris, the Guns of Navarone.

Why I recall those things, I know not.
Why I did not say I do not know, I do not know.

Though, pausing to think,
knowing contains the doing of it within it, you know.
What's to do?

Outlaws were more my heroes than cowboys, and marshals, and such
Especially the ones that had been forced out by law.

I grew up in a 1950's junkyard with no fence, one mile north of route 66
On the Al-Can highway to Las Vegas, 103 miles away.
My Grandpa was a blacksmith's son,
who rode a horse he broke and his pa had shod
From Texas to Arizona in 1917, at the age of 18.

by the time I knew him,
He was fifty, settled down, nearly, from the war.
Momma had to work, so, daytime, Granddaddy raised me.

Horses weren't, wrecked cars were,
the toys of my childhood.

Grandpa built a junkyard from cars left steam blown
on the old stage road, from before
the railroad.
The Abo Highway hain't been Route 66 for some time yet…
Hoping…


Hoping sometime to polish this bit of this book, I left myself re-minders
Hoping memory of mental realms might rewind or unwind sequentially
When trigger
Neighed.
That worked, Roy Autry and Gene Rogers were names Sue Snow's
Mormon Bishop granddaddy called me,
back when I first recall My Grandpa Caleb,
a baptist by confession,
who was,
as I recall a *****-drinkin' jolly drunk.
While Grandma made beds in some motel,
granddaddy built boats and horse trailers
and hot rod 34 Chevies,
and he fixed this one red Indian, I could read the word on the gas tank, I knew the word Indian
and this motor cycle was proud to wear the name. I was 4.

A stout-strong man, no fat near any working muscle system,
he could and would
repair any broken thing,
for anybody. People called him Pop.
Pop and Mr. Levi-next-door at the Loma Vista Motel, shared a listing in the Green Book,
so broke down ******* knew where help could be found
after dark in that town.
There was a warnin'ag'in
let'n sunset there
on darker than grandma's skin.

My Gran'daddy's shop had two gas pumps
that were reset to begin pumping with the turn of a crank.
As soon as I could turn that crank,
I could pump gas.
I could fill up that red Indian
Motorcycle.
But "m'spokes was too short
to kick the starter."
I told my eleven year old uncle
and he told
how he would always remember learning
that saddles have no linkage
to horse brakes.
"Not knowing what you cain't do
kin *** ye kilt."

He grew up in the junk yard, too.
My first outlaw hero.

Likely, I am alive today, because
On the day I discovered I could pump gas as good as any man,
I also discovered that real motorcycles were not built for little boys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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