It is full summer now, the heart of June;
Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir
Upon the upland meadow where too soon
Rich autumn time, the season’s usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,
That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on
To vex the rose with jealousy, and still
The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,
And like a strayed and wandering reveller
Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June’s messenger

The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,
One pale narcissus loiters fearfully
Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid
Of their own loveliness some violets lie
That will not look the gold sun in the face
For fear of too much splendour,—ah! methinks it is a place

Which should be trodden by Persephone
When wearied of the flowerless fields of Dis!
Or danced on by the lads of Arcady!
The hidden secret of eternal bliss
Known to the Grecian here a man might find,
Ah! you and I may find it now if Love and Sleep be kind.

There are the flowers which mourning Herakles
Strewed on the tomb of Hylas, columbine,
Its white doves all a-flutter where the breeze
Kissed them too harshly, the small celandine,
That yellow-kirtled chorister of eve,
And lilac lady’s-smock,—but let them bloom alone, and leave

Yon spired hollyhock red-crocketed
To sway its silent chimes, else must the bee,
Its little bellringer, go seek instead
Some other pleasaunce; the anemone
That weeps at daybreak, like a silly girl
Before her love, and hardly lets the butterflies unfurl

Their painted wings beside it,—bid it pine
In pale virginity; the winter snow
Will suit it better than those lips of thine
Whose fires would but scorch it, rather go
And pluck that amorous flower which blooms alone,
Fed by the pander wind with dust of kisses not its own.

The trumpet-mouths of red convolvulus
So dear to maidens, creamy meadow-sweet
Whiter than Juno’s throat and odorous
As all Arabia, hyacinths the feet
Of Huntress Dian would be loth to mar
For any dappled fawn,—pluck these, and those fond flowers which
are

Fairer than what Queen Venus trod upon
Beneath the pines of Ida, eucharis,
That morning star which does not dread the sun,
And budding marjoram which but to kiss
Would sweeten Cytheraea’s lips and make
Adonis jealous,—these for thy head,—and for thy girdle take

Yon curving spray of purple clematis
Whose gorgeous dye outflames the Tyrian King,
And foxgloves with their nodding chalices,
But that one narciss which the startled Spring
Let from her kirtle fall when first she heard
In her own woods the wild tempestuous song of summer’s bird,

Ah! leave it for a subtle memory
Of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun,
When April laughed between her tears to see
The early primrose with shy footsteps run
From the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold,
Spite of its brown and trampled leaves, grew bright with shimmering
gold.

Nay, pluck it too, it is not half so sweet
As thou thyself, my soul’s idolatry!
And when thou art a-wearied at thy feet
Shall oxlips weave their brightest tapestry,
For thee the woodbine shall forget its pride
And veil its tangled whorls, and thou shalt walk on daisies pied.

And I will cut a reed by yonder spring
And make the wood-gods jealous, and old Pan
Wonder what young intruder dares to sing
In these still haunts, where never foot of man
Should tread at evening, lest he chance to spy
The marble limbs of Artemis and all her company.

And I will tell thee why the jacinth wears
Such dread embroidery of dolorous moan,
And why the hapless nightingale forbears
To sing her song at noon, but weeps alone
When the fleet swallow sleeps, and rich men feast,
And why the laurel trembles when she sees the lightening east.

And I will sing how sad Proserpina
Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed,
And lure the silver-breasted Helena
Back from the lotus meadows of the dead,
So shalt thou see that awful loveliness
For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war’s abyss!

And then I’ll pipe to thee that Grecian tale
How Cynthia loves the lad Endymion,
And hidden in a grey and misty veil
Hies to the cliffs of Latmos once the Sun
Leaps from his ocean bed in fruitless chase
Of those pale flying feet which fade away in his embrace.

And if my flute can breathe sweet melody,
We may behold Her face who long ago
Dwelt among men by the AEgean sea,
And whose sad house with pillaged portico
And friezeless wall and columns toppled down
Looms o’er the ruins of that fair and violet cinctured town.

Spirit of Beauty! tarry still awhile,
They are not dead, thine ancient votaries;
Some few there are to whom thy radiant smile
Is better than a thousand victories,
Though all the nobly slain of Waterloo
Rise up in wrath against them! tarry still, there are a few

Who for thy sake would give their manlihood
And consecrate their being; I at least
Have done so, made thy lips my daily food,
And in thy temples found a goodlier feast
Than this starved age can give me, spite of all
Its new-found creeds so sceptical and so dogmatical.

Here not Cephissos, not Ilissos flows,
The woods of white Colonos are not here,
On our bleak hills the olive never blows,
No simple priest conducts his lowing steer
Up the steep marble way, nor through the town
Do laughing maidens bear to thee the crocus-flowered gown.

Yet tarry! for the boy who loved thee best,
Whose very name should be a memory
To make thee linger, sleeps in silent rest
Beneath the Roman walls, and melody
Still mourns her sweetest lyre; none can play
The lute of Adonais:  with his lips Song passed away.

Nay, when Keats died the Muses still had left
One silver voice to sing his threnody,
But ah! too soon of it we were bereft
When on that riven night and stormy sea
Panthea claimed her singer as her own,
And slew the mouth that praised her; since which time we walk
alone,

Save for that fiery heart, that morning star
Of re-arisen England, whose clear eye
Saw from our tottering throne and waste of war
The grand Greek limbs of young Democracy
Rise mightily like Hesperus and bring
The great Republic! him at least thy love hath taught to sing,

And he hath been with thee at Thessaly,
And seen white Atalanta fleet of foot
In passionless and fierce virginity
Hunting the tusked boar, his honied lute
Hath pierced the cavern of the hollow hill,
And Venus laughs to know one knee will bow before her still.

And he hath kissed the lips of Proserpine,
And sung the Galilaean’s requiem,
That wounded forehead dashed with blood and wine
He hath discrowned, the Ancient Gods in him
Have found their last, most ardent worshipper,
And the new Sign grows grey and dim before its conqueror.

Spirit of Beauty! tarry with us still,
It is not quenched the torch of poesy,
The star that shook above the Eastern hill
Holds unassailed its argent armoury
From all the gathering gloom and fretful fight—
O tarry with us still! for through the long and common night,

Morris, our sweet and simple Chaucer’s child,
Dear heritor of Spenser’s tuneful reed,
With soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled
The weary soul of man in troublous need,
And from the far and flowerless fields of ice
Has brought fair flowers to make an earthly paradise.

We know them all, Gudrun the strong men’s bride,
Aslaug and Olafson we know them all,
How giant Grettir fought and Sigurd died,
And what enchantment held the king in thrall
When lonely Brynhild wrestled with the powers
That war against all passion, ah! how oft through summer hours,

Long listless summer hours when the noon
Being enamoured of a damask rose
Forgets to journey westward, till the moon
The pale usurper of its tribute grows
From a thin sickle to a silver shield
And chides its loitering car—how oft, in some cool grassy field

Far from the cricket-ground and noisy eight,
At Bagley, where the rustling bluebells come
Almost before the blackbird finds a mate
And overstay the swallow, and the hum
Of many murmuring bees flits through the leaves,
Have I lain poring on the dreamy tales his fancy weaves,

And through their unreal woes and mimic pain
Wept for myself, and so was purified,
And in their simple mirth grew glad again;
For as I sailed upon that pictured tide
The strength and splendour of the storm was mine
Without the storm’s red ruin, for the singer is divine;

The little laugh of water falling down
Is not so musical, the clammy gold
Close hoarded in the tiny waxen town
Has less of sweetness in it, and the old
Half-withered reeds that waved in Arcady
Touched by his lips break forth again to fresher harmony.

Spirit of Beauty, tarry yet awhile!
Although the cheating merchants of the mart
With iron roads profane our lovely isle,
And break on whirling wheels the limbs of Art,
Ay! though the crowded factories beget
The blindworm Ignorance that slays the soul, O tarry yet!

For One at least there is,—He bears his name
From Dante and the seraph Gabriel,—
Whose double laurels burn with deathless flame
To light thine altar; He too loves thee well,
Who saw old Merlin lured in Vivien’s snare,
And the white feet of angels coming down the golden stair,

Loves thee so well, that all the World for him
A gorgeous-coloured vestiture must wear,
And Sorrow take a purple diadem,
Or else be no more Sorrow, and Despair
Gild its own thorns, and Pain, like Adon, be
Even in anguish beautiful;—such is the empery

Which Painters hold, and such the heritage
This gentle solemn Spirit doth possess,
Being a better mirror of his age
In all his pity, love, and weariness,
Than those who can but copy common things,
And leave the Soul unpainted with its mighty questionings.

But they are few, and all romance has flown,
And men can prophesy about the sun,
And lecture on his arrows—how, alone,
Through a waste void the soulless atoms run,
How from each tree its weeping nymph has fled,
And that no more ’mid English reeds a Naiad shows her head.

Methinks these new Actaeons boast too soon
That they have spied on beauty; what if we
Have analysed the rainbow, robbed the moon
Of her most ancient, chastest mystery,
Shall I, the last Endymion, lose all hope
Because rude eyes peer at my mistress through a telescope!

What profit if this scientific age
Burst through our gates with all its retinue
Of modern miracles!  Can it assuage
One lover’s breaking heart? what can it do
To make one life more beautiful, one day
More godlike in its period? but now the Age of Clay

Returns in horrid cycle, and the earth
Hath borne again a noisy progeny
Of ignorant Titans, whose ungodly birth
Hurls them against the august hierarchy
Which sat upon Olympus; to the Dust
They have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must

Repair for judgment; let them, if they can,
From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance,
Create the new Ideal rule for man!
Methinks that was not my inheritance;
For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul
Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.

Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away
Her visage from the God, and Hecate’s boat
Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day
Blew all its torches out:  I did not note
The waning hours, to young Endymions
Time’s palsied fingers count in vain his rosary of suns!

Mark how the yellow iris wearily
Leans back its throat, as though it would be kissed
By its false chamberer, the dragon-fly,
Who, like a blue vein on a girl’s white wrist,
Sleeps on that snowy primrose of the night,
Which ‘gins to flush with crimson shame, and die beneath the light.

Come let us go, against the pallid shield
Of the wan sky the almond blossoms gleam,
The corncrake nested in the unmown field
Answers its mate, across the misty stream
On fitful wing the startled curlews fly,
And in his sedgy bed the lark, for joy that Day is nigh,

Scatters the pearled dew from off the grass,
In tremulous ecstasy to greet the sun,
Who soon in gilded panoply will pass
Forth from yon orange-curtained pavilion
Hung in the burning east:  see, the red rim
O’ertops the expectant hills! it is the God! for love of him

Already the shrill lark is out of sight,
Flooding with waves of song this silent dell,—
Ah! there is something more in that bird’s flight
Than could be tested in a crucible!—
But the air freshens, let us go, why soon
The woodmen will be here; how we have lived this night of June!

Newdigate prize poem recited in the Sheldonian Theatre
Oxford June 26th, 1878.

To my friend George Fleming author of ‘The Nile Novel’
and ‘Mirage’

I.

A year ago I breathed the Italian air,—
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,—
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet’s gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of our English Spring,
Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago!—it seems a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow,
And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow.
Full Spring it was—and by rich flowering vines,
Dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines,
I rode at will; the moist glad air was sweet,
The white road rang beneath my horse’s feet,
And musing on Ravenna’s ancient name,
I watched the day till, marked with wounds of flame,
The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned.

O how my heart with boyish passion burned,
When far away across the sedge and mere
I saw that Holy City rising clear,
Crowned with her crown of towers!—On and on
I galloped, racing with the setting sun,
And ere the crimson after-glow was passed,
I stood within Ravenna’s walls at last!

II.

How strangely still! no sound of life or joy
Startles the air; no laughing shepherd-boy
Pipes on his reed, nor ever through the day
Comes the glad sound of children at their play:
O sad, and sweet, and silent! surely here
A man might dwell apart from troublous fear,
Watching the tide of seasons as they flow
From amorous Spring to Winter’s rain and snow,
And have no thought of sorrow;—here, indeed,
Are Lethe’s waters, and that fatal ****
Which makes a man forget his fatherland.

Ay! amid lotus-meadows dost thou stand,
Like Proserpine, with poppy-laden head,
Guarding the holy ashes of the dead.
For though thy brood of warrior sons hath ceased,
Thy noble dead are with thee!—they at least
Are faithful to thine honour:—guard them well,
O childless city! for a mighty spell,
To wake men’s hearts to dreams of things sublime,
Are the lone tombs where rest the Great of Time.

III.


Yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain,
Marks where the bravest knight of France was slain,—
The Prince of chivalry, the Lord of war,
Gaston de Foix:  for some untimely star
Led him against thy city, and he fell,
As falls some forest-lion fighting well.
Taken from life while life and love were new,
He lies beneath God’s seamless veil of blue;
Tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o’er his head,
And oleanders bloom to deeper red,
Where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground.

Look farther north unto that broken mound,—
There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb
Raised by a daughter’s hand, in lonely gloom,
Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king,
Sleeps after all his weary conquering.
Time hath not spared his ruin,—wind and rain
Have broken down his stronghold; and again
We see that Death is mighty lord of all,
And king and clown to ashen dust must fall

Mighty indeed their glory! yet to me
Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,
Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,
Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain.
His gilded shrine lies open to the air;
And cunning sculptor’s hands have carven there
The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,
The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn,
The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell,
The almond-face which Giotto drew so well,
The weary face of Dante;—to this day,
Here in his place of resting, far away
From Arno’s yellow waters, rushing down
Through the wide bridges of that fairy town,
Where the tall tower of Giotto seems to rise
A marble lily under sapphire skies!

Alas! my Dante! thou hast known the pain
Of meaner lives,—the exile’s galling chain,
How steep the stairs within kings’ houses are,
And all the petty miseries which mar
Man’s nobler nature with the sense of wrong.
Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song;
Our nations do thee homage,—even she,
That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany,
Who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow,
Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now,
And begs in vain the ashes of her son.

O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done:
Thy soul walks now beside thy Beatrice;
Ravenna guards thine ashes:  sleep in peace.

IV.

How lone this palace is; how grey the walls!
No minstrel now wakes echoes in these halls.
The broken chain lies rusting on the door,
And noisome weeds have split the marble floor:
Here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run
By the stone lions blinking in the sun.
Byron dwelt here in love and revelry
For two long years—a second Anthony,
Who of the world another Actium made!
Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade,
Or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen,
’Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen.
For from the East there came a mighty cry,
And Greece stood up to fight for Liberty,
And called him from Ravenna:  never knight
Rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight!
None fell more bravely on ensanguined field,
Borne like a Spartan back upon his shield!
O Hellas!  Hellas! in thine hour of pride,
Thy day of might, remember him who died
To wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling chain:
O Salamis!  O lone Plataean plain!
O tossing waves of wild Euboean sea!
O wind-swept heights of lone Thermopylae!
He loved you well—ay, not alone in word,
Who freely gave to thee his lyre and sword,
Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon:

And England, too, shall glory in her son,
Her warrior-poet, first in song and fight.
No longer now shall Slander’s venomed spite
Crawl like a snake across his perfect name,
Or mar the lordly scutcheon of his fame.

For as the olive-garland of the race,
Which lights with joy each eager runner’s face,
As the red cross which saveth men in war,
As a flame-bearded beacon seen from far
By mariners upon a storm-tossed sea,—
Such was his love for Greece and Liberty!

Byron, thy crowns are ever fresh and green:
Red leaves of rose from Sapphic Mitylene
Shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for thee,
In hidden glades by lonely Castaly;
The laurels wait thy coming:  all are thine,
And round thy head one perfect wreath will twine.

V.

The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze
With the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas,
And the tall stems were streaked with amber bright;—
I wandered through the wood in wild delight,
Some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet,
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet,
Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay,
And small birds sang on every twining spray.
O waving trees, O forest liberty!
Within your haunts at least a man is free,
And half forgets the weary world of strife:
The blood flows hotter, and a sense of life
Wakes i’ the quickening veins, while once again
The woods are filled with gods we fancied slain.
Long time I watched, and surely hoped to see
Some goat-foot Pan make merry minstrelsy
Amid the reeds! some startled Dryad-maid
In girlish flight! or lurking in the glade,
The soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face
Of woodland god! Queen Dian in the chase,
White-limbed and terrible, with look of pride,
And leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side!
Or Hylas mirrored in the perfect stream.

O idle heart!  O fond Hellenic dream!
Ere long, with melancholy rise and swell,
The evening chimes, the convent’s vesper bell,
Struck on mine ears amid the amorous flowers.
Alas! alas! these sweet and honied hours
Had whelmed my heart like some encroaching sea,
And drowned all thoughts of black Gethsemane.

VI.

O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told
Of thy great glories in the days of old:
Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see
Caesar ride forth to royal victory.
Mighty thy name when Rome’s lean eagles flew
From Britain’s isles to far Euphrates blue;
And of the peoples thou wast noble queen,
Till in thy streets the Goth and *** were seen.
Discrowned by man, deserted by the sea,
Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery!
No longer now upon thy swelling tide,
Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria’s purple waters used to flow.

O fair!  O sad!  O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia’s royal warrior hath passed
Rome’s lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown
In the high temples of the Eternal Town!
The Palatine hath welcomed back her king,
And with his name the seven mountains ring!

And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain,
And mocks her tyrant!  Venice lives again,
New risen from the waters! and the cry
Of Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty,
Is heard in lordly Genoa, and where
The marble spires of Milan wound the air,
Rings from the Alps to the Sicilian shore,
And Dante’s dream is now a dream no more.

But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all,
Thy ruined palaces are but a pall
That hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name
Burns like a grey and flickering candle-flame
Beneath the noonday splendour of the sun
Of new Italia! for the night is done,
The night of dark oppression, and the day
Hath dawned in passionate splendour:  far away
The Austrian hounds are hunted from the land,
Beyond those ice-crowned citadels which stand
Girdling the plain of royal Lombardy,
From the far West unto the Eastern sea.

I know, indeed, that sons of thine have died
In Lissa’s waters, by the mountain-side
Of Aspromonte, on Novara’s plain,—
Nor have thy children died for thee in vain:
And yet, methinks, thou hast not drunk this wine
From grapes new-crushed of Liberty divine,
Thou hast not followed that immortal Star
Which leads the people forth to deeds of war.
Weary of life, thou liest in silent sleep,
As one who marks the lengthening shadows creep,
Careless of all the hurrying hours that run,
Mourning some day of glory, for the sun
Of Freedom hath not shewn to thee his face,
And thou hast caught no flambeau in the race.

Yet wake not from thy slumbers,—rest thee well,
Amidst thy fields of amber asphodel,
Thy lily-sprinkled meadows,—rest thee there,
To mock all human greatness:  who would dare
To vent the paltry sorrows of his life
Before thy ruins, or to praise the strife
Of kings’ ambition, and the barren pride
Of warring nations! wert not thou the Bride
Of the wild Lord of Adria’s stormy sea!
The Queen of double Empires! and to thee
Were not the nations given as thy prey!
And now—thy gates lie open night and day,
The grass grows green on every tower and hall,
The ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall;
And where thy mailed warriors stood at rest
The midnight owl hath made her secret nest.
O fallen! fallen! from thy high estate,
O city trammelled in the toils of Fate,
Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days,
But a dull shield, a crown of withered bays!

Yet who beneath this night of wars and fears,
From tranquil tower can watch the coming years;
Who can foretell what joys the day shall bring,
Or why before the dawn the linnets sing?
Thou, even thou, mayst wake, as wakes the rose
To crimson splendour from its grave of snows;
As the rich corn-fields rise to red and gold
From these brown lands, now stiff with Winter’s cold;
As from the storm-rack comes a perfect star!

O much-loved city!  I have wandered far
From the wave-circled islands of my home;
Have seen the gloomy mystery of the Dome
Rise slowly from the drear Campagna’s way,
Clothed in the royal purple of the day:
I from the city of the violet crown
Have watched the sun by Corinth’s hill go down,
And marked the ‘myriad laughter’ of the sea
From starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady;
Yet back to thee returns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening dove.

O poet’s city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers cast their doublets green
For Autumn’s livery, would seek in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell thy days of glory;—poor indeed
Is the low murmur of the shepherd’s reed,
Where the loud clarion’s blast should shake the sky,
And flame across the heavens! and to try
Such lofty themes were folly:  yet I know
That never felt my heart a nobler glow
Than when I woke the silence of thy street
With clamorous trampling of my horse’s feet,
And saw the city which now I try to sing,
After long days of weary travelling.

VII.

Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago,
I stood and watched the crimson sunset glow
From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain:
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain
Of blood and battle from the dying sun,
And in the west the circling clouds had spun
A royal robe, which some great God might wear,
While into ocean-seas of purple air
Sank the gold galley of the Lord of Light.

Yet here the gentle stillness of the night
Brings back the swelling tide of memory,
And wakes again my passionate love for thee:
Now is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come
On meadow and tree the Summer’s lordly bloom;
And soon the grass with brighter flowers will blow,
And send up lilies for some boy to mow.
Then before long the Summer’s conqueror,
Rich Autumn-time, the season’s usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see it scattered by the spendthrift breeze;
And after that the Winter cold and drear.
So runs the perfect cycle of the year.
And so from youth to manhood do we go,
And fall to weary days and locks of snow.
Love only knows no winter; never dies:
Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies
And mine for thee shall never pass away,
Though my weak lips may falter in my lay.

Adieu!  Adieu! yon silent evening star,
The night’s ambassador, doth gleam afar,
And bid the shepherd bring his flocks to fold.
Perchance before our inland seas of gold
Are garnered by the reapers into sheaves,
Perchance before I see the Autumn leaves,
I may behold thy city; and lay down
Low at thy feet the poet’s laurel crown.

Adieu!  Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,
Which turns our midnight into perfect noon,
Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well
Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell.

Still alone
We are not
Maybe Titan
All we got
Mine our way
Barge ore back
Build a bridge
Plutonium tack
Ceramic sails
On solar wind
Terminal shock
Butterflies pinned
On orbital ellipses
‘Gainst starry drops
Spun light and dark
Like judgment tops
Spendthrift starfish
Regenerate limbs
From primal screams
That eat our sins

Museums as art
Art as museums
Sail the trail to my mausoleum
Psychopaths and physicists
Psychiatrists and philosophers
Philanthropists and pilots and painters


Declare now, that these are our days –
Our hours, and our days
These are our city, our hours
Our time, our days.


This is our world –
At 14:92 I landed here and claimed it
And searched it and found it wanting
Of civilization that I could so easily supply
By means of wounds and iron
And brawn and truth
(and just a tiny touch of influenza darling)
By means of our Lord,
Who grants us all that we desire
If only we **** enough of those he did not choose.
This is our world –
And we shall make it what we will
Make it in our own image
Teach it that innocence is not knowing the difference between right and wrong
Raise it to hate no one
But to love itself so deeply
That all other love seems hateful in comparison.
This is our child, love
Yours and mine.


Here the first shall be last
And the last shall be first
But once the first are last they shall be
Last
Last
      Last
And once the last are first
They shall make it so they can never be last again
This is our primitive accumulation
Of necessary materialism
Let’s cultivate matter
To make objects that we can place on shelves
And in cases –
These are our cases
And we love them as we love ourselves


Museums as mass graves
Mass graves as museums
Kiss me in my mausoleum
Priests and prisoners
Prostitutes and prophets
Pioneers and pilgrims and pagans


This is our time –
And we are dispensing it in spendthrift increments
Buying threadbare bandages for our cavernous canyons
Buying ample earplugs
To seal in the silence
So we can somewhat say
“look there is peace –
Look we have done it
In our time it is accomplished” – 


This is our peace –
And we know it by the signs
The lions and lambs lay quietly together
In our brass-barred zoos
For as long as shelves and cases
Are intact and the first are first
And the last are last
And the civilized are organized and holy
There is peace –
Oh, look
We made peace!

And as for Solomon and Socrates –
We take their words to weave through our new wisdom
And when we re-chart the constellations
We shall give them each a star
And salute them once a year
When they come around the universe
Oh, look
How wise we are!

Mass graves as art
Art as mass graves
There have been no better days
There has been no greater time
Politicians and pornographers
Professors and pirates
Psychologists and pastors and pianists


This is our time –
And we are doing with it the very best we know how
The last are toiling and trying
And the first are trying to think to try –
But there is a shortness in our hours
And a violence in our peace
There is inherent foolishness in our wisdom
And disease in our cities
And there is death upon our shelves and in our cases.

This is our world –
We crafted it and declared our truth to be true
We sculpted this, our colosseum
Please inscribe my mausoleum
With “we know not what we do”

They’re surprisingly hard to talk about
The Rob Lowe Memes
they were a moment of wholeness
thrown out by deceit

Sent and received
so many message receipts
about Parks and Recreation
and the West Wing

Do you just want someone to talk to?
Because I do
I like you
and The Rob Lowe Memes

But were they a means to an end?
Pretend friendship for what?
Spendthrift with interest
without a mention of a finish

yet you left and I let you
doing nothing to stop it
I didn’t think you really knew me
trying to speak through
The Rob Lowe Memes.

To reminisce, while all the world is pride,
I sit it out (remembering the flood),
I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.

Look west, sharp swallows sweep the sun aside,
Tomorrow’s hurt quakes within the mind; odd
To reminisce, while all the world is pride.

In moments lost, instances regretted,
The whirligig of time spins out some mood,
(I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.)

The evening light’s remorseful spendthrift tide
Gleamed gold, for just a moment, like a god
(To reminisce, while all the world is pride)

Shining just enough to halt some sad slide,
Clouds clear away before there’s time to brood,
(I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.)


To come full circle, reach home port, and hide
Each painful loss through trial, trust or blood.
To reminisce, while all the world is pride,
I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.

Wake up it’s a beautiful morning,
like the infinity of a closed chain;
lists keep growing, brain-freeze again.
As long as there’s tomorrow, not today.

Succinct intentions imprinted by a hoot;
how can a sub-conscious refuge,
de-commission the projected truth?
A 24-hour religion, is that all it is?

So which way is it to be tomtom?
Intrepidation never failing,
or honour ‘the’ grand unveiling?
Side-step: back to back-warming Oracle.

Pride appoints a distilling of hidden stature;
forget the dentistry of a mounted gift,
sensitivity not deserving an emotional spendthrift.
No mentions of a game, but you have to play.

Rationalising the intensity of late;
surely that’s an impossibility of squirming feet?
Solution follows a tryst of the elite,
subjects must therefore be; for it to make sense.

Periodic patterns of revolving chrome-vanadium,
lends itself nicely to discontentment
and occasionally promotes relinquishment;
summer sun; does it matter?

Survival make-up – check.
Abrupt journey’s end; in your face.
An odyssey not started yet, offers no grace.
Relax, the God’s haven’t even begun their terror.

The bottom of a barely coping universe it might just be;
Curious are the similarities to sinking sand.
Submerge as you extend your hand?
Or do I just simply do nothing, and nothing happens?

Rat-out the analytical introspection monster;
For when you can see your own reflection in a black-hole;
A bonus penalty shot at life’s ultimate goal;
Then a neutered Neutron star is a good thing to be.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)


I love life, because in living you get all problems
I love eating because you can constipate if you eat a lot,
I love women because they reduce pocket giants to beggars,
I love children because they instill economic tension to parents,
I love trees because green snakes derive poison from them,
I love poor people because their life is pure experiment,
I love rich people because they snobbishly love themselves
I love motor vehicles because they depreciate in a decade,
I love Americans because they have drones for Gaddafi,
I love Americans because they know nothing beyond their borders,
I love the British because they have a monarch in their democracy,
I love Europeans because they were perfect in colonialism,
I love Africans because they are natural stooges, but very showy
I love the Chinese because they are all short, young and commutalists,
I love the Catholic Church because it has liberal piety,
I love Muslims because they are not intellectually tolerant to Rushdie,
I love young girls because they rarely sense danger,
I love Germans because they made a beetle car; Volkswagen,
I love the Japanese for honesty; they declared me Shinto of poetry,
I love my wife for her spendthrift culture
I love my son for his disgust of school and books,
I love myself for being a poetic rapscallion,
I love everything for in love you display your folly,
I love music, wine and money; they expose you to the robbers
I love short people for their mediocrous thought pattern
I love tall women; they are dull, honesty and rarely divorce,
I love English hunchbacks for they are famed for being erotically strong.

We took a bus to Wilmington
And skipped a dream or two
In order to be cognizant—
When the “Are we there yet’s”
Rebounded void of “yet.”

We parked the bus adjacent to
The paint-peeling facade
Of lonely temple Wilmington—
Threatening no demon of the sky
With a keenly polished death spike.

It had no spendthrift window of
Christ Jesus with the sick
And poor, neglected derelicts—
Who glow with jubilee and gold chloride
For His altruistic charities.

Across its door was fastened tight
A rusted iron chain
Which barred the shallow, blinkered souls—
Who loitered at the barrier’s feet
Waiting on God to warrant entry.

But we who were of cogent view
Detached deterring catch
And entered with our chins *****—
A light-bulb-vacant sanctuary
Where taciturn shadows took a seat in every pew.

And down a velvet aisle stood
A lonely, weeping priest
Inhaling in unblemished palms—
That not a single pious doubter
Would dare inspect.

“Welcome to my church,” he said
With breathless, choking sobs,
“I am the congregation here—
The pastor, choir, usher, and Sunday school teacher
Of Wilmington Church of Reason.”

Inquired we what hidden woe
Enlaced with torment cast
Those salt discharged convulsions—
Quaking the sanctity of exultation
In the House of Apollo.

And with concise, unleavened words
He justified his tears
And whispered to our weary troop—,
“Alone, alone am I,
Isolated within this box of omitted truth.

“O, give me soothing slumber deep
And strip these sentient eyes
From ghastly sheaths of consciousness—
Repair this mended paradigm,
Or tell me that I am mistaken.

“Imaginary friends and foes
Make wretched hearts a wreath
Of roses red and mistletoe—
And bird of paradise to keep
Hope alive, alive and awake and well, hope alive…”

So each of us, a brimming cup
Of empathy, remained
To keep old pastor Wilmington—
Old usher, choir, teacher, congregation Wilmington
Alive and awake and well.

autumn leaves
spill down over a roof
to a pocket of yard below,
generous currency
scattered to all who will value it.

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident


My life is bequeathed to me alone.
Title passes to me,
With my first breath.
Thus endowed, thus entrusted,
T'is my duty to throw off the
tyranny of fear and despotic rule of a
Life of looking over one's shoulder.

Therefore,
My life is mine to take,
Should I wish to choose the
Place, date, the time
To let the poetry cease,
I will announce it mostly gladly
with a blessing of
Shehecheyanu* and a
Smiling "by your leave."

Thrifty, stinking-thinking, I could hoard joy
Until such time, when best savored.
Backload the best for the latter days,
When worry was deceased,
Self-preservation necessity not a daily awakening curse,
The daylight-reminder, of my human status,
Check the box next to human stiff.

Choice,
Picking the time and place,
Freed me in away I had ne'er known,
Confounded the mind's logic,
For the heart murmured, joy is not
A penny earned and a penny saved,
But a disposable with a short shelf life.

Spend and spent it fast,
Be a spendthrift of life,
Viewed the miracle of the
Canister of oil and the burning bush
(Neither could be consumed)
Become me, and my song's refrain.

Ode to joy and self evident truths,
Owning this truth gave me
Pleasure without measure, for it
Replenished itself by daily use,
Evident then to preserve one's self
**Best served by wild, mad living.

Qui Transtulit Sustinet

There sat CONNECTICUT, a twit
blue nanny-state, and doomed to sit
on welfare-warrens of the ******
her social service on demand.
She withers on NEW ENGLAND‘s vine
a bygone has-been, and a sign
of democratic overkill
where her once-dear and verdant rill
now stagnant flows: polluted stream
a moribund New England dream.
The richest state with poorest heart:
the Northeast’s saddest story. Part
of history’s renowned revival,
now irrelevant. Survival
chains her children in dependence
keeping back the state’s ascendance.
Apostate Puritan, grown old—
for LIBERTY, no longer bold;
a slave to Man, where once God’s WORD
awakened greatness. Souls were stirred
in ENFIELD (of all strange places),
Christ beheld in radiant faces . . .
Edwards held their spellbound souls
like spiders over flaming coals,
in gratitude for Gospel grace
renewing thus both town and race.
But I digress. Connecticut
is what I came to speak about:
forgotten dull colonial matron
yoked in failure, plebe as patron
nostalgic for her Charter Oak
whose deadwood limbs went up in smoke
along with dark tobacco wrap
while the plantation took a nap.
Her social programs overgrowth
pose forest fire-risk. Under oath
her public servants signal virtue;
sign which really should alert you
to the democrat-machine’s
impending failure (ways and means).
Nutmeg-addled Tax-and-spenders,
dollar drunks on welfare benders
widen economic rifts;
force single moms toward double shifts
while Latin Kings hold court in prison
waiting out their royal season:
fiscally unsustainable—
yet totally explainable
(nutmeg is a drug for witches
spendthrift warlocks, bankrupt *******).
Oh HARTFORD, city of the dead
which dies at five, then home to bed,
insurance once assured your rise;
but now your ghosts haunt sadder skies.
Your life displaced, outsourced, out-dated;
so, it seems, your fall was fated.
Meanwhile, close to New York City,
fairer fields are growing pretty
long on corporate commutes.
Data-driven growth computes
as data-drivers flood the roads
and enter by Manhattan-loads
from golden coasts’ Atlantic shores
and posh patrician golden doors
to bite the apple of our time:
a number-cruncher built on crime.
New England’s puritannic granny
(data-driven tyrant ******)
seeks to harbor tropic isles
with blandly bureaucratic smiles.
Your poor dear heart cannot afford
to welcome every island lord
who looks to better his estate
and so decides to emigrate.
Displaced Jamaicans outta yard
compel the soft verse to get hard.
Boricua separatists, dispersed
show nationalities reversed
and dwell between two foreign lands
in Spanglish no one understands.
Such nutmeg gets the covens high
to soar the stormy Liberal sky.
It’s Yankee hubris: condescension
taxing plebes for such dissension.
Though you connect, there I would cut,
excising from New England’s gut
metastasizing social tumors:
clueless and obese consumers,
teenage moms, pajama-clad
whose nenes wait in vain for dad.
QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET—truth . . .
but that was was in our nation’s youth.
She’s gotten worse with passing years
confirming citizens’ worst fears;
showing her colors every vote
her monotone, a droning note
on which the blue-bloods hang their hue
when hope and change are overdue.
Her atheist zeal meets Yankee pride:
a most progressive broomstick ride;
oblivious to her Christian past,
an enemy of God at last.

Spendthrift zillionaire,
parsimonious pauper,
wrong!                    
           God, redo if you can.

My finance is getting no better
Fast is thinning my purse
My pocket is now a deep crater
Where money is growing sparse!

Spending what came was my craze
Bucks pouring in didn’t stay
Blissfully forgot the adage
Keep aside for rainy day!

I spent my earn on what not
Bought everything catching eye
Possessed by the only thought
Should spend last penny fore I die!

It had gone like this for years
I went on a spending spree
Till one fine morn in tears
Bade me goodbye the last penny!

Now in old age and low spirit
With money dimming too faint
I can no more be a spendthrift
With my purse’s meager remnant!

Laments soul my unheard muse
If only you had paid me heed
Put all those money to better use
And not just cared for own need!

If you don't learn to economize,
Be prepared to agonize.
27/72019

A man amidst two fools
Is a fool, a big fool
So it's for most of us
Cos' we ditch our dreams
To Paul pry with friends
We forsake our missions
For the flash of friction
With cast of distraction
Today might not really pays
But it's the truest of days
Dare not waste a bit of it
Nor spend a morsel like a spendthrift
Invest thy cowries of time
In companies of focus men
March beside valiant soldiers
That thy victory may come with ease
Friends are thy armoury
Don't battle with the rust of them
Thy friends are thy clothes
Don't suit-up with the rags.

as i descend into the mad sun
i visit blue brothels and calm green seas.
i rip cables out of butterflies
to suture my wounds.
i change my course,
to my Fate.

As Must 
we all.

II

i've learned a great many things
about dead ends... they always start
where you live.
they bend the moon to your aspect.
the red death to a - 
false hope.
with a real
hope.

and as much despair.

III

gather where ye may, the very laurels 
of your heart. But, be neither spendthrift with your anguish -
nor copiously disarmed.
have your adventures where a god - 
can pardon you...
For having less faith
than an abandoned
thought of You.

go only to return.
and burn your memoirs in the attic
to **** the dream.

leave no fingerprints in the vacuum.
wash your hands of the spiral -
and feel what
It Means.

Somewhere between lost and totally lost,
There we became unconscious,
Indeed! Really lost,
Daunt like an evening shadow,
Then my breathe seemed shallow,

But, we poor men in our poverty,
Carried away with ample manifestos,
I objected to that saying,
Very naive like a girl in her puberty,
Who know only how to wash her toes,
On the contrary, she is dying,
So I strife,
Striving in our emaciated life.

Then just like a cow
Led to the abbatotior,
They ruin every sector,
But we were fools in mere ecstacy,
They made us believe colonization was necessary,
But it was a foul,
Now we beg leniency,
Unlike spendthrift of our currency.

Now we cry for antidote,(change)
Disregarding That oat,
But through what doors?
The west?
Perhaps East?
Probably the south?
Or from the graced North?
What doors?

That which no writing could criticized,
No satirical work could correct,
Indeed! The best materialized,
But speaking of the change, what earth?

But pray a calmed storm,
Even after our hypocrisy,
And false democracy,
When will the truth come,
All is well, the mother had told,
But I guess sometimes the truth is best left untold.

Prayers 830/2022
The findrompscar of egintoch kilmarge verdure veraciloquence bemoaning with pleionosis and sharpened vesicles of the seminative enthralled belletrist of novalia conquered by fallow vestiges of revalorized conations of orchestras of mathesis girdled by the hebephrenia of ecphonesis debauched in flombricks of the macadamized pathway of alloreck demand an invictive supercherie of skelder never a pilgarlick of pisteology deturpated by delitescent romage and gadarene gadabouts of the frigoric scaramouches of ruffianized kenodoxy blaring with semaphores of megalography in the sondage of plebeian reboant rebuses of qwasthink ennobled by the noema of the noosphere glorified by roundabout circumlocution because the reiterative gabble of those who neglect the omphalos of the noosphere always reticulate false cantered pretense because of constative uncertainties always asterongue in their longiniquity from the gangues of the heapstead of the realistic tropes of surreal tropology. We geck our way from gentilian fewterers of stirpiculture and the silvics of the gammon of gamines suborning fideicide in leveraged largesse countermanding with a calenture of colposiquanomian quozian fravvel the retromorphosis of profaned lascivious fossarian debouched and crass vibronic alopecia of anatocism surging never with rhipidate deflexure in the pleonexia of the pleroma of supercalendar frimples of deskandent cloveryield only partial to nebbich fortuitism rather than the spargosis of the counterphobic rintinole of earwigs of pronounced ebriection sparking the geotaxis of high larceny dragooning with imperium in aleatory passiuncles of ideoprone thermolysis of the abyssopelagic depths of stygiophobia rancid in bromides of gnomic rancor of gnomonic kurgans of gerdoying intorgurence that brannigans walm with the weirdward ascendancy of blackguarded illation circumspect in its picaresque hues of oligochrome that the laxism of pericope will not permit the greater sacrilege and tribune of frackling flarmey whadronque mendaciloquence of the kenspeckel notoriety of operose syndicalism in the dumose formative bushwhacking license and licentiousness of the Cambristry of foutered and flictitious frankquibber neoteny, this is precisely because the counterphobes that demand the syndicalism of serfdom are always hibernating on their own outrecuidance rather than bemoaning the depths of the reversal of the minimasque because of the terminus of the diestrus of denostram. We belong, however, to an age of ergotall rhipidate ragmatical perendination by the intrepid galvanization of the tremendum of rogation sizzling in dashpot acrimony that the subsultus of engorged modernity crafts in knackish knavery the lucifuguous but lucriferous fangast flannel of fanfaronade rather than fandangled cagophilists of callisteia alone never the gezellig of belgards of bronteum can empower the chandlers to reast of bibliopolist rarissima of enervated existentialism becoming the apagoge for the minimism of doctrinaire dogmatic serfdom simultaneous to the isorropic ravenous ravellin of the ratten bewrayed swirk jaunty in spellbound subversion but always recursive in the ingemination of illecebrous forsifamiliation that the rackrent of prurience demephitises only to funnel the effluvia of squalor and squandermania into a chockablock fumiduct of erasure rather than revalorized redintegration of lypemania offered at the outrance of lythcoop in phylactic manners so that the lientery of gravid supercherie of the semese ditokous radicalism of  ravelins of symposiarch syndaysmia might become enhanced by reckoning rather than diminished by crucibles of the antithesis of ataraxia at the penultimate scribacious saxifragous liturgy of sempervirent immortelles of the remontant opportunism of malingered tropoclastics of curved naivety and synclastic realism amasthenic because of prismatic surrealism. Amen

B. The whyern of the lazaretta of oxyholotrons of ghallitosis recumbent upon tisicky sockdolagers of loimic pestilence of limosis that cravenly bends all reticulation and resofincular singularities of the promontory of gadarene genius that the refracturism of liturgicide might demigrate with the demegorics of picine elapid pigarsconce phylarchy always contramanded by cowcatcher counterphobic babeldom that roils in sublimity manufactured by arrivistes of eclat that we might marvel at the majestic gauleiter in his engastrimyth porlocking purpresture of the purview of the noxal demiurge of gelogenic denouement that fewer spanerias cornered by the pogonips of suspended hebephrenia in the waning gloaming improvidence of importunate ludibund finifugal travesty that it might find recurrence in its attempted regelation of the wamzel impetus strengthened by eumoireity and the encraty that becomes the balderdash of egintoch fortitude that they might never mammer at the picaresque librations of the selenic bromidrosis that endangers by deliberate degrees of bromidrosis of frustraneous faffle that the fangasts might use the invictive turnverein of orthotropism in gallantry belonging to the gammerstangs of hylozoism even as an outgrowth of figurative thanatousia repining on its euhemerism and decrying its normalism of nocicepty in aspheterism that the eventual acme demolishes the ragtagger wreggled freggets of popinjay ventose conceit that breems of albatross dart in zugzwang rather than expedite in eupraxia of the idiolect of the grambouncers of scopophilia enamored so much of amasthenic and synclastic reboant phonophorous lurid triumph that never a crucible of laterad denouement of the raissoneurs of genius might find any crambazzled prurience in arrogation a detest of gammadions never belonging to the proper tribance of the rengall shibboleths of people that scowl in delitescent objurgation renowned for sublime rendavation that fewer may alienavesce by graklongeur and that more jongleurs of festive callithumpian imperseverant temerity might jow the tachymetry of the noosphere to the pinnacle of civilized eudaemonism never curtailed by the ballicatter of killcows blackguarding their own grapnels of possessive intorgurence and faineant psychosophy that all might denounce the rindstretch of alloreck because of ineradicable estoppage as the deturpation of the placomania and dacoitage of lewd larceny and never provident tribunes of humane orthotropism in orthobiosis. Amen

C. The raisonneur of pleionosis in the pleroma of refocillated recalcitrance emboldened into jaunty statures of refrain in the fescennine quarters of cartography bedizened by majestic megalography that simpers in the wangermist of junctition never a frackling seraglio of denatured ravellin in the skerries of skeumorph can contradict with the eupraxia rather than the dystocia of primiparas of a rhipidate fashion of patibulary treony diminutive in its trillom of flarium regarded never as faffle but always as fanfaronade that the smartest ideoprone nebbich pataphysics of modernity might quarrel with collieshangies of rapid repute opining because of quidlibertarian opiniasters of ophiuran bolides of meteoric whyern that they might all stagger davering away from the dwale of the blemished steganography of dengonin that the otarine aspergillum of ghoulish mandriarchs against an omphalism only tendentious with the full warble of tachymetry of falsehood rather than perdurable in the pasilaly of patience percutient in its force of rancor and acrimony that the ultrageous outrage always meets the favor of the tribunes of certainty rather than the delirifacient qualms of quacksalvers of martexture in the wrathcheque wartle of the renegade alone rather than the audacity of jongleurs to sway the real silviculture of sertivine and herculean geotechnics always transcendent rather than regelated only for the reflationary illusions of the revet and chaffer of broches of sanctified purpresture never the peaceful ponkoss of the pleckigger of the condign allotment. We stagger through the motatory mobilism of the diutiurnal demephitised dephlogisticated refocillation that renounces the frottage of ******* in all septuagint referendum of popular renown rather than gaumless numquids of rhizogenic rhabdomania in this heyday of providence rather than the naysayers who become the quilombo questmongers of irreption only because of the radicolous typhlophilia that scrounges pestilence and in scurrilous internecine balkanization of the avenue of truth and the highways of deceitful and disreputable phanerolagnia that they might always see the malison of the malism of the azimuth and avizandum of tziganology in shibboleth rather than in the rapidfire patibulary renown of the bowdlerized margaric and maricolous denouement of the tributaries of sempirvirence never in luxury but always in chiminage. Amen

D. Rhadbomania of the rhombos of tauricide ennobles the chiliarchy into the sederunt lancination of privilege becoming the crotaline demeanor of raffish runagate rampicks of ramellose radiciform bloviation that owes its coherence never to the  crucible of the epigones that boast in the steganography of wravvel but always evade their corporate responsibility to the anemocracy of never an anneabil gezellig of only the goliardy of dementia but that they always sustain an opiniaster flargent and deskandent impavid resofincular destination as the terminus of their finitism of consideration. May we always absolve the finicky albatross rather than the flocking jackals braying in the winterkill of subterfuge that they might with the magomancy of dragonnade rather than the imperium of honest cadence may their blarney and bletherskate impudence become to them a greater curse than the blessings of the avizandum of only a chrestomathic but outnumbered foe of the realism of a scandent scaramouch demisang of portreeves of hatred fomenting all spumid spindrifts and snirtles of disdain that they might bemoan their own intorgurence of refractory putanism as they scrimshank themselves only on meteoric pride rather than honest recidivism back into the heyday of truth rather than the matroclinic lies of bluestocking matriarchs of mandarism and omphalism contempered into raches that lack the oxyblepsia of ratomorphism ennobled rather than deturpated by both slaughter and laughter. Amen

E. Raffish runagates that enervate themselves of any oxyacaesthesia that they might belong to the demephitised bowery of their own supercilious provincial randan that the ranarian liposuction of their travesty becomes apparent in the kenspeckel of belletrist aimed against their magpiety of mafficking magomancies of false pretense rather than the sockdolagers of majestic genarchs above their littoral swank and alluvions of combustible antebellum swasivious larceny of the common forum against the lyceum of the promethean that by definition becomes radicalized by the rhipidate martexture of their profound deceit. We might never forsifamiliate or defiliate ourselves from nuclear truths rather than raffish lies of ruffianized vandalism of sacerdotalism and the triumphs of rogation above the pother of their outmantled owleries of recidivism in bloodthirst and graft. We might always overhaile without a hint of isorropic irony or the patibulary dudmans of the dringles of dwizzened wonderworks overwrought by rainshod oppression by the gullywashers of modernized tarnish hermalloping the best truths with sempervirent fictions that gadarene gadabouts prance with frantling and pavonine debellation that never provokes capitulation but only a talionic clarigation of the wartle of deceit disguised as the meteoric triumph of the hypertrophy of the hyperborean and thereby selenic invictive force of promethean millitasters emboldened into combat but never rescinded into a Miss Congeniality pageantry that shroffs by incorrect baragnosis of brassage a radical impotence rather than a plenipotentiary pantagamy of pantoglots that surf the alluvion rather than become infumated by the insolation of vesuviated hatred only countermanded by counterclock ratiocination always hobbled by the spancules of ridicule. Time is the behest of eternal alveolate synergies rather than the turgid muck of the jabberwocky of sublime elitism that is often parodied by the peenge of the thole of tauricide roaring in the winds of paravented elitism that scaramouches of skelder and the consequences of their impudence in only schadenfreude of perendination might they meet a whadronque end at the terminus of their own wrathcheque in their estrapade of the interrex rather than the eupraxia of their common objective in objectivism that finally regards with supreme truth the elements of neovitalism that buoy rhizogenic and seminal seminules of hylozoism combined with ratomorphism that we might all be astounded when the roostery outmantles the owlery because of the oxyacaesthesia that only the gubbertushed crapehangers disown in their minimifidian minimism against dogmatic lurches of triumph against the headlong deceit of hamshackled commitments of the spargosis of the colporteurs of only the most plebeian considerations rather than the most promethean samizdats that survive because the biognosy of bionomics is tautochronous to the fascinations of a newfangled isonomy between the bibliopolist of rarissima and the henchmen of the politicide of the polyacoustic babeldom of conclamation that tries desperately to cadge and roodge through diestrus the selachostomous sondage of the clastic mereology of love beyond any trivialized notions of macadamized macarism or worse the opportunism of the portreeve gauleiters of vandalized schadenfreude disregarding the ****** of a gamboling frescade with the hypaethral heavens bequeathing the glebes of plebania with a pleroma rather than a pleonexia. The pasilaly of consequentialism in the reference of doxography that might never faint by the cordial resofincular dimensions of  corrugated wizened and dwizzened dringles of pataphysical naivety that is an objurgation of negativism rather than an elevated triumph of the aqueducts of the irrigation of all novantique by the paragons of lolloping swank in the proper pleckigger notarized by the plackiques of the semaphores of the ennobled wrepolis never craven in its eustress that finally the fangasts of temerity rather than the harridans of the bloodthirst corruption of the boweries of graft eviscerated by the providence of the esquivalience of naivety that they might understand the synclastic relativism of our times magnifies the mesmerism of the siderism finally stellized enough to outmantle the pothers of fumatorium and erase the frinterans of spendthrift pismirism from the hallowed sacrarium of the modern liturgy rather than the archaeolatry of the bethels of lewd tradition empowered by footloose philandering and venal venereal valetudinarianism that itches to foreclose on every mortgaged contract of family that they might be defiliated by the timmynoggies of sin rather than redacted by the greater good of the enosimania of those that find findrouement neither a rubricality nor a qualm but rather the axiomatic fulfillment of the toil of graklongeur never feckless in its ascendancy against the tidal destruction of selenocentric arrogance of ludibund nescience that frolics only in the carapace of naive novantique rather than the egestuous realization that the crapehangers of shibboleth are useless because the apikoros are defiled by their flargent disbelief rather than ennobled by their fidelity to the agapism of a favored century over the declension of the fatalism of finifugal aghast and rantipole negations of the malaise of only the malapert reconnaissance of the scepsis of dubiety rather than the optimistic omphalism of synclastic and amasthenic centuples of redintegrated happenstance becoming peremptory novelty in the novantique of the proper pleckigger of reverence in the paravent against the umbrageous sabotage of the listless in liturgy and the intorgurent disdain of liberticide. May God reckon upon the Earth a newer triumph that never in sheepish bleats davers in periblebsis because of predatory galvanization of instinct and the worst shibboleths of the pilgarlick pigsconce of blatteroons of nescience in their firm commitment to hylicism that can easily find apagoge never only in the aphemia of aphnology of the anacusic irrecusable enmity of those that despise halidom because of the groundling fascination with only volcanic lavondeurs rather than the narthex of lavaderos that scavenge all florilegium for the tombstone of truth and the resurrection of the lively anacampserote of the optimistic escape of those persecuted by estoppage and redstrall into the frontier of harmony and the syndicalism of centripetal serendipity. Amen

.
The fly makes his way through the house.
Its tongue, like billions before, is tainting  
All it touches.  The fly has wings to spread  
His mess, and though he has innumerable  
Facets to his eyes he cannot see  
The swatter coming.

The house surrounds the fly and is sacred.
As the great blue world beyond is sacred.  
And the fly is spreading fast, flitting here  
And sticking there trampling his own  
Shelter, spreading pollution and excrement  
With a rolling tongue  

That spews and spits upon his own home.  
And though he is happy while he soils  
His house his eyes are two dead worlds  
Barren and still, born to die by the hand  
That flies even higher, so, the fly cannot  
See the swatter coming.

Buzzing, like a burn, through the innocent  
Air he dreams of vast minions rooting  
His world with legion hands.  The house was  
A garden that led him in, he cannot  
Wait for his seed to fester, all's he needs  
Are God’s green plants  

And clean water, some fresh air to conquer.
This house was made for him he would have  
Himself believe.  But when all has dried  
And all is soiled the fly would wish to move  
On, if only he could, trapped as he is  
In the earth and wooden house.

He could taste it all, oblivious to oblivion
In God’s green wooded world— all spinning,  
The sands are running in the sacred home  
That he himself has always defiled,  
As he has never shown any grace;
The swatters hand is His—
Own spendthrift hand.
.

Though I’m
Less attractive
As I’m not a fool
I set criteria
My wife to be
Ravishingly beautiful.

Though I have
A wandering eye
Cast yours
On lothario’s why?

Though my
Achilles’ heel
Is infidelity
I demand from you
Unflagging loyalty.

Though
The breadwinner
Is I
To juggle
Two or more jobs
Try not you why?
Of course
Forget not to tackle
Domestic chores.

Though I come home
When peep stars bright
Get home when
Days cede place to night!

Though I’m spendthrift
I expect you
To prepare a dish
I relish.

Though I don’t know
My son’s grade
I’m afraid
Help him out with
Assignments you have
Before he
Goes to bed.

Though I’m
Growing grotesque
And old
Why don’t you
Exercise care
Your beauty to
Maintain or hold?

Though I’m peevish
Fix in your mind
You must not
Pay me in kind.

Though I’m
To you
Less respectful
And rude
To whatever I say
Be crude.

Though I’m dictatorial
And prefer to use
The stick
This habit of mine
Get not sick.

Though I’m
In love making weak
Contentment elsewhere
Do not try to seek.
Though I’m
Willing with you
On marital avenue
Long to walk
Shun we must
On the complication
A hard talk.

Though I’m
A grown up
Pamper me
As a newly born
Its mother
That has to worn.

Immediately after I
Fetched my salary
From a Bank
When I get drunk
Getting into a bar,
From my home not far,
No longer subject
To my inhibition
I become bold
To make an
Open breast of my love
To my inaccessible dove,
For on such state
I become easily capable
My financial challenges
And physical appearance
Anxieties to dissolve.

I crunch her number
Getting no answer
"U R Z best Chick
On earth! "
I SMS her
But go not any further.
It is early in the morning
I ask myself
"What possibly could
Be her feeling! "

Also into a bar
When I make
A divine entrance
To rub shoulders
With colleagues
I stand a chance
Or above them
On the ladder of success
A bit advance.

Also when at night
When I see
Pub's dazzling light
My timidity
No longer in place
Myself assertiveness
Proceeds apace!

Also I bet
Alcohol, dunker's pet
To tension management
Has some effect.

On the morrow
It is when I get
Out of pocket
My spendthrift bent
I regret.

Aside from my health
Going downhill,
I am becoming
Incapable to foot
Electric and water bill.

Tipsy, at times
Blunt, for a fight
I begin to hunt.///

How do I recognize this thing called love.
Shall I call her by name?
Will her eyes sing songs of deep memory?
Is she meant to tug at my heart,
The push and pull of tides past
Chaining me to her with links of pearl?

How am I meant to recognize love,
If I've never met her before?
If she doesn't feel like the stories and fables,
If she is messy and broken and damaged,
If she hurts more than she keeps,
How am I to know love is real,
And not just chains rusting
In the deep.

But worse,
If I can't recognize love,
But she can recognize me,
Feel the tug of her heart with me,
Want me,
What monster am I
To keep her by my side
Waiting in spendthrift time
For me to recognise this thing called love.

studious skinny scruffy scribe

My utmost humblest apology
for inducing the following
cerebral calisthenics upon your cranium,
but the cost of friendship
with yours truly
(me – a foo fighting,
eagle eyed, beatle browed, beastie boy  
christened Matthew Scott Harris)
doth newt come
like some hootie and the blowfish
super tramping
cheap trick linkedin to
wings at the reo speed wagon
spinning zz top soundcloud.

Scathing, scolding, screaming,
scorning, searing, sniggering,
sociopathic sarin soaked skewed
squirt, sputtering, squawking, sleepily
staggering, stabbing, swaggering
sweltering sadistic, sarcastic,

savage, systemically systematically
stigmatized, supersized saber sharp
schick shaving, shunned, sabotaged,
scarred, scorched, smote, sanguine,
stippled, speckled schizophrenic
sensibility, spurring, seething,

somewhat stultified, sophisticated,
spellbound spirited scabrous
schlemiel schlemazel, stenciled,
sundered sniveling sanguine storied
snakebitten sojourning *******,
skeptical shoddy sophomoric

screwball, subtly sagacious,
stunted, sclerotic, scrappily
shuffling short, Shylock
styled sideburns Semite,
sainted Shasta sipping
shriveled sad sack,

sullenly syncopated, synthesized,
slobbering sybaritic, scruffy
sheepish sketchy scalawag,
Socratically scrutinizing, seizure
stricken, stoically sneezing,
shamed Skidrow skeezer, shifty,

sweaty, sham shaman,
supremely spidery, schmaltzy,
sylan seeking subsidized succor,
self shuttered, sequestered,
sidelined, shiftless, shabby,
semantically snazzy, soldiering,

shrieking, skulking, somber,
stooping, Segway scootering,
schmart spendthrift, Swahili
speaking, straitlaced, streamlined,
spongebobbing, sandal shod
sealegs, squarepants sporting

spectacles, sedate, sensate,
sentient, ship shaped,
shanghaied, salubrious,
slithering, snakish, stuttering,
sluggish, smashface scarred,
sober, solitary, sangfroid

skidamarink singing, Shamokin
speaking scrivener, scuzzy,
spunky, starved, submissively
suicidal, sunburned,
salaried shuffling senescent
snoutish soundcloud shutterflying
snapchatting schnorrer.

(a poor excuse for legs),
and get me the latest
sophisticated prosthetics advancements,
whereat integration of cultured stem cells
into custom made appendages
allows, enables, and provides
unfortunate recipients of amputations
to experience sensations.

No more will yours truly
(skinny legged sexagenarian)
envy amputees fitted with smart limbs
equipped tricked out arms and legs,
cuz he will be proud owned
with false limbs
(mainly legs, I did not decide
about equally spindly arms)
finding a once nasty, short
and brutish solitary
Norwegian bachelor farmer
transformed into a very charming, tall
and humane debonair troubadour
rivaling the likes of any swain.

No insult meant
for those handicapped,
who experience(d) phantom limb
perhaps linkedin to
fierce near mortal kombat,
wondering if stayin alive
after surviving serious wombs
that killed fellow combatants
trying your darndest
to feel worthy earning a purple heart,
(a distinguished military decoration
awarded in the name of the President

those who got wounded or killed
while serving in the U.S. armed forces),
with attendant laurels such as
handsome veteran benefits,
answering the call of duty
nevertheless daily reminders
being survivor as a foreigner
waging war, when host country
loathed American military as infidels,
whose countrymen bathed
innocent defenseless civilians
in blood of barbarity.

Stop saying sassy sobriquets schooled
***** spindleshanks...
studious skinny scruffy scribe.

Scathing, scolding, screaming,
scorning, searing, sniggering,
sociopathic sarin soaked skewed
squirt, sputtering, squawking, sleepily
staggering, stabbing, swaggering
sweltering sadistic, sarcastic,
savage, systemically systematically
stigmatized, supersized saber sharp
schick shaving, shunned, sabotaged,
scarred, scorched, smote, sanguine,
stippled, speckled schizophrenic

sensibility, spurring, seething,
somewhat stultified, sophisticated,
spellbound spirited scabrous
schlemiel schlemazel, stenciled,
sundered sniveling sanguine storied
snakebitten sojourning *******,
skeptical shoddy sophomoric
screwball, subtly sagacious,
stunted, sclerotic, scrappily
shuffling short, Shylock
styled sideburns Semite,

sainted Shasta sipping
shriveled self secluded sad sack,
sullenly syncopated, synthesized,
slobbering sybaritic, scruffy
sheepish sketchy scalawag,
Socratically scrutinizing, seizure
stricken, stoically sneezing,
shamed Skidrow skeezer, shifty,
sweaty, sham shaman,
supremely spidery, schmaltzy,
sylan seeking subsidized succor,

self shuttered, sequestered,
sidelined, shiftless, shabby,
semantically snazzy, soldiering,
shrieking, skulking, somber,
stooping, Segway scootering,
schmart spendthrift, Swahili
speaking, straitlaced, streamlined,
spongebobbing, sandal shod
sealegs, squarepants sporting
spectacles, sedate, sensate,
sentient, ship shaped,

shanghaied, salubrious,
slithering, snakish, stuttering,
sluggish, smashface scarred,
sober, solitary, sangfroid
skidamarink singing, Shamokin
speaking scrivener, scuzzy,
spunky, starved, submissively
suicidal, sunburned,
salaried shuffling senescent
snoutish soundcloud shutterflying
snapchatting Schwenksville schnorrer.