One each end of a shelf
Victorian figurines
A boy and girl
Like crystalline
With stiff edged lace.
Never fell in love
But still precious
Bought by a Godmother
Who did not have children.

Then the plaster dancers
Spied in a box of my father’s
Given by a poor grandmother
Loved these two
With their net “tutus”
Such graceful arms
Long pointed legs
Felt their life twirling.

The difference between
Two worlds
The rich and stiff
Poor but beautiful.
My bedroom shelf,
With a poster of
**** Jagger,
in the middle,
smiling.

Love Mary x

A Rock there is whose homely front
    The passing traveller slights;
Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,
    Like stars, at various heights;
And one coy Primrose to that Rock
    The vernal breeze invites.

What hideous warfare hath been waged,
    What kingdoms overthrown,
Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft
    And marked it for my own;
A lasting link in Nature’s chain
    From highest heaven let down!

The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
    Their fellowship renew;
The stems are faithful to the root,
    That worketh out of view;
And to the rock the root adheres
    In every fibre true.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
    Though threatening still to fall:
The earth is constant to her sphere;
    And God upholds them all:
So blooms this lonely Plant, nor dreads
    Her annual funeral.

                * * * * * *

Here closed the meditative strain;
    But air breathed soft that day,
The hoary mountain-heights were cheered,
    The sunny vale looked gay;
And to the Primrose of the Rock
    I gave this after-lay.

I sang-Let myriads of bright flowers,
    Like Thee, in field and grove
Revive unenvied;—mightier far,
    Than tremblings that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope,
    Is God’s redeeming love;

That love which changed-for wan disease,
    For sorrow that had bent
O’er hopeless dust, for withered age—
    Their moral element,
And turned the thistles of a curse
    To types beneficent.

Sin-blighted though we are, we too,
    The reasoning Sons of Men,
From one oblivious winter called
    Shall rise, and breathe again;
And in eternal summer lose
    Our threescore years and ten.

To humbleness of heart descends
    This prescience from on high,
The faith that elevates the just,
    Before and when they die;
And makes each soul a separate heaven
    A court for Deity.

--To Elizabeth Robins Pennell


'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time
There was a little boy:  a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional!  And Powers
Passed with him where he passed.  And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.--

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering ****** of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,
Antic in girlish broideries
And skirts and silly shoes with straps
And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
Plain in the shadow of a church
(St. Michael's:  in whose brazen call
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
Sedate for all his haste
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
Boarded in sober drab,
With small, square, agitating cuts
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
What but that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms--
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim
Familiars, cronies quaint
And goblin!  Never a Wood but housed
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings.  No Brook
But had his nunnery
Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
To cabin in his grots, and pace
His lilied margents.  Every lone Hillside
Might open upon Elf-Land.  Every Stalk
That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
Called for his Faery Harp.  And in it flew,
And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
The shy thrush at mid-May
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
And mocked him call for call!

I could not pass
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
And elbows.  In the rich June fields,
Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
Lolled his half-holiday away
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son
On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
For at his stirrup linked and ran,
Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
From wall to wall above the espaliers,
But in the bravest tops
That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
A banner flaunted in disdain
Of human stratagems and shifts:
King over All the Catlands, present and past
And future, that moustached
Artificer of fortunes, ****-in-Boots!
Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing
Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases--
Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part
A faery chamber hazily seen
And hazily figured--on dark afternoons
And windy nights was visiting of the best.
Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
Out in the roaring darkness told
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
Between his hell-born Hounds.
And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
For, listening, I could help him play
His wonderful game,
In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near,
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
The run of Ali Baba's Cave
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'
With gold to measure, peck by peck,
In round, brown wooden stoups
You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time
Made you Aladdin's friend at school,
Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
For all the embrowning scars in their white *******
Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
Strange Curs that cried as they,
Till there was never a Black ***** of all
Your consorting but might have gone
Spell-driven miserably for crimes
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
While you lay wondering and acold,
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
Queen Labe, abominable and dear,
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
And muttered certain words you could not hear;
And there! a living stream,
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
And cresses, glittered and sang
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time!--
That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined,
Pausing at one mysterious door,
To pry no closer, but content his soul
With his kind Forty.  Yet I could not rest
For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
(That wonder-working word!),
Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
And soaring, soaring on
From air to air, came charging to the ground
Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
Flicked at me with his tail,
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
(Even as I was in deed,
When doctors came, and odious things were done
On my poor tortured eyes
With lancets; or some evil acid stung
And wrung them like hot sand,
And desperately from room to room
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
To get to Bagdad how I might.  But there
I met with Merry Ladies.  O you three--
Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart
Forgets you all shall be forgot!
And so we supped, we and the rest,
On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
Almonds, pistachios, citrons.  And Haroun
Laughed out of his lordly beard
On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
For all their Mossoul habits).  And outside
The Tigris, flowing swift
Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
The vast, blue night
Was murmurous with peris' plumes
And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
Were whispering; and old fishermen,
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
Dead loveliness:  or a prodigy in scales
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold:
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
In durance under potent charactry
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint,
Bewildering angles, so would Life
Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
Were changed.  Once in a house decayed
From better days, harbouring an errant show
(For all its stories of dry-rot
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
I wandered; and no living soul
Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
Upon them staring--staring.  Till at last,
Three sets of rafters from the streets,
I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
Guarding the door:  and there, in a bedroom-set,
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
With an aspect of frills
And dimities and dishonoured privacy
That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain,
All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran
As for my neck, but in the street
Took breath.  The same, it seemed,
And yet not all the same, I was to find,
As I went up!  For afterwards,
Whenas I went my round alone--
All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets,
Where I might stretch my hand and take
Whatever I would:  still there were Shapes of Stone,
Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath
Had smitten them; but they watched,
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
The Painted Eyes insufferable,
Now, of those grisly images; and I
Pursued my best-beloved quest,
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
So the night fell--with never a lamplighter;
And through the Palace of the King
I groped among the echoes, and I felt
That they were there,
Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
A Voice!  And in a little while
Two tapers burning!  And the Voice,
Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was--whose?
Whose but Zobeide's,
The lady of my heart, like me
A True Believer, and like me
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles
Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
Swiftly . . . and grew.  Tearing their beards,
The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand,
And, turning broadside on,
As the most iron would, was haled and ******
Nearer, and nearer yet;
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
Anchors and nails and bolts
Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
About the waters; and her crew
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
To drown.  All the long night I swam;
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
Skirted with shelving sands!  And a great wave
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
And, faring inland, in a desert place
I stumbled on an iron ring--
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
When, scenting a trap-door,
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
Stuck into wood.  And then,
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
Sunk in the naked rock!  The cool, clean vault,
So neat with niche on niche it might have been
Our beer-cellar but for the rows
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars)
Full to the wide, squat throats
With gold-dust, but a-top
A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
I knew for olives!  And far, O, far away,
The Princess of China languished!  Far away
Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
Of Eunuchs and the privilege
Of going out at night
To play--unkenned, majestical, secure--
Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
Like Tigris shore for shore!  Haply a Ghoul
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
A thighbone in his fist, and glared
At supper with a Lady:  she who took
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates
Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes--
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
Or those red-curtained panes,
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
Might turn a caravansery's, wherein
You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
You'd not have given away
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
Escaped on a roc's claw,
Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while
The schoolboy satchel at your hip
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
From over Caspian:  yea, the Chief Jewellers
Of Tartary and the bazaars,
Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.--

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
The magian East:  thus the child eyes
Spelled out the wizard message by the light
Of the sober, workaday hours
They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
In ancient Severn's arm,
Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
Whose floating populace of ships--
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought
To her very doorsteps and geraniums
The scents of the World's End; the calls
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals
For comradeship that sound
Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
Telling itself anew
In terms of living, labouring life,
Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
The Angel-Playmate, raining down
His golden influences
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
Walked with me arm in arm,
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
Sends the same silver dews
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound
Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
Sullenly smoking over a row
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
Of hurtling, tipping trams)--
As on the amorous nightingales
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers
Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears,
Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names!  That star-vaned belvedere
Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
Might overtake you:  for one fringe,
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
Floats founded vague
In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
The promise of wistful hills--
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

How was it for you?
Uncle asked, lying
Slumped across Auntie,
Some small-beached
Whale, his voice escaping
His lungs as would air
From a punctured tyre.

Fine, it was fine, Auntie
Sighed, her soprano
Voice easing beneath
His sweaty soft bulk,
Unaware their young
Niece was standing silent
By the half open door,

Capturing them in the
Semi light, waiting small
And innocent to ask for
Water, dithering, unsure
Whether to ask and stay
Or simply to close the
Door and walk away.

Correctly he is John the Baptizer,
His birth was delayed up to late,
Late post menopausal age of his mother,
Elisabeth the wife of Zachariah the priest,
At the temple of the Jews in Palestine
During the regal time of Rome
As a world empire and a role model of tyranny,

Imagine conceiving after menopause,
During the nonagenarian ages
Of all the ages, in the nineties?
But she conceived John,
Was it true or mere sensationalism?
Or mere nerve chilling art style?
To hold the world audience a hostage?
I don’t know but  John was born
After his mother’s menopause,

He contrasts with Jesus
Born by a ****** Mary,
Imagine a Jewish ******
Without ****** *******
Became pregnant,
And gave birth to Jesus,
When Mary was pregnant
She socially visited Elisabeth
John’s fetus somersaulted,
Like a Chinese acrobat
Inside his mother’s tummy,
It was his baptism before birth,
But may be pregnancy of a ******
Has more strength than pregnancy
Of a post menopause octogenarian,

Hence the famous ode by Catholics;
In the name of Hail Mary
The mother of God
Most blessed above all women,

These post menopause pregnance
And ******‘s pregnancy without ***
Contrasts with Adam’s creation from clay
And Eve’s creation from Adam’s left rib,
Another super-sensational literature,
Or pataphorical art; Magical surrealism?

Let me not go dumb or mute
Like Zachariah when he believed not,
But no, I already believed ergo, my vocality,

Now why did John refuse to put on clothes?
Only to put on a skin of a goat,
Or was it a monkey Clobus,
The one which we in Africa
We are forced to ****
Before your father permits you
To face the circumcision knife,
John again refused to eat cooked foods,
He survived on raw honey and locusts,
Nuts, roots and raw fruits, dietician?

Or it was self denial or self immolation?
Like the one often displayed
by the Islamic statesmen aka terrorists
When committing suicide bombing?
No it began with the Japanese Kamikaze,
In preparation to bomb Pearl Habour,
I don’t know at all at all,

Now what of the howling in the wilderness,
Calling for people to baptism in water
At the riverbanks of polluted Jordan
And when he saw the Negroes
Among those who came for baptism
He called them the viper’s generation
Or were they Libyan Arabs?
And Jesus came, John went inferior,
He declined to baptize Jesus,
But Jesus pleaded for the service,
Then the dove opened the heaven
And came down to anoint Jesus,
Which heaven was opened?
Was the sky or the heaven?
This must be the writer’s Gnostics
Used to calling the sky as the heaven
Why the dove and why the heaven?

Then john again began doubting
Very genuine doubt I m telling you,
You see john began spying on privacy of the king
Was he also a night runner? Maybe,
He spied on Herodias the mother of Salome
She was a chic for the king; Herod Antipas,
This stuff threw John into  a calaboose,
Then John began day dreaming
Like any other prisoner
For his freedom and bush foods
He really missed honey and locusts
And also the fruits; Quavas and mustaberries,

He thought Jesus would come running,
Panting like a cheetah to pull him out,
Out of colonial prison, Jesus never came
Hence Johns doubts;
If Jesus is the Messiah really,
Can’t he come to redeem me?
From these colonial prison Herod,
Look; we are all Jews
In fact blood related Jews
And it is a year he has never come,
To pay me a visit when am in prison
Is he the Messiah really?
Or we still have to wait for a true messiah?

But Jesus was a rude messiah
Or Jesus was jealousy? Envious?
Of John’s spiritual competence,
I think he was wrong, totally wrong
He should have saved john the Baptizer
From the Roman colonial prison,
For there is no need nor spiritual logic
For Jesus to heal the lepers, and the blind
To resurrect Jairus’s daughter
And command the devils out of a madman,
But he could rescue his cousin brother
From a colonial prison, was it detention?
Remember Mary and Elisabeth were sisters,

John was a victim of circumstance
Like those who now languish in torture,
Torture chambers of the quatanamo bay prison,
Detained and tortured inhumanly
Without hope of trial nor justice
For no other reason but faith and race,
John was a harbinger of Sadam Hussein,
Osama Bin Laden, Mummar Gaddafi,
Nelson Mandella, Luther King, Dedan Kimathi,
Elijah Masinde, Arap Manyei and Mugo wa Gatheru,
They fought tyranny with firmness
They underwent torture for the sake of humanity,
They suffered for no reason but folly that goes with tyranny.

And finally, Salome the poet,
Living by performing the spoken word,
And Proceeds of her mother’s adultery
And vampirizing on the blood of the righteous
She came and danced in artful wickedness
by gyrating her ***** satanically
In the usual wicked style of a *****’s daughter
Sending the male audience nerveless with ego
Only for to suggest her prize;
As John’s head on the platter,
John was grisly mattered in the cells
Then his head was delivered on a platter
To Salome the poet the daughter of Herodias,
It all happened when Jesus was aware
Amid the full wind of his wonders
On the crest of his fame as the messiah
Isn’t saving the prisoner good as resurrecting
Young damsels and healing the lepers’?

But anyway, it is stark culture of Europe
To chop off the heads
Of those who oppose their tyranny,
It is not only John the Baptist that have suffered,
Suffered like this in the hands of Europeans tyranny,
The list of such-like victims is endless;
Mugo wa Gatheru was buried alive in Kenya
He was ordered at a gun point
By the British colonial police,
To dig his own grave using a mattock
Then the British clobbered and buried him a live,
On this brutal burial of Mugo wa Gatheru,
The Queen of England promoted these policemen
That buried Mugo wa Gatheru,
Kotalel Arap Samoia of the Nandi Militia in Kenya
Was shot twice in the head by the British spy;
The spy chopped off Koitalel’s head
He took it to the queen in heroic dint
And the queen glorified the spy,
Anglo-American power chopped of sadam’s head
Anglo-American power killed Mummar Gaddafi,
Anglo-American power Killed Osama bin Laden
They perpetrated all these without trial,
I am tired of all these………………

In rows like crumpled paper set,
The way one might design a brooch,
There sets a sparkle down so purely
Capital, beyond reproach and sure
She is the blackest flea who sits
Upon an old green dog, now should

You query, her name's a pond.  In Gaelic
It's pronounced: Baile Átha Cliath—
But in Irish she's plain, mightily named,
Dublin.  Where broods the dove, linnet
And swan.  Now take them pi'jons, they got
Dank habits and linnets lament the silent

Stones.  Sure, the goose gave out and took
To the air, but the swans, they've landed,
To roost, enchanted as 'Children of Lir,'
And so becomes a changeling child's
Fair city, for in her anointed proximity,
Gracious white birds do bathe and molt,

Supplied as I can tell, she looks black-
Pooled in clusters, long side her creases.
Stout nectar flows in near every nook
And cranny, but yer man, he's never
Busy, that malty fish, daftly avoids,
Swimming spirals round like buggies

Do on petals, he'd rather grace gardens
By drinking their dew.  O Dublin town,
She wends her ways and rows her houses
Round-a-bout on cobbled shores in tribute
To sprite, deary and fey, Anna Livia—
Who like a stem of blood, stabs right

To the heart of Dublin Bay— and proud
As a crowned thorny, who once had reeked,
She's bloomed large, into one grandeous
Beauty, like a céilí so finely fiddled—
A sandy, spirited, bombastic beach-
Flower, she is, a flag so fitting upon

The doons.  In dream, I flocked to her
Like the wild geese and saw her coy'd
Repose and there I spied, from mackerel
Skies— one monstrous, Irish rose!

Her cunning eyes
he spied, slyly write
the usual evaluation note
any guy is familiar:
"His eyes are right there
where the difference lies
grazing my curves
as if it is all his;
on the edge he is, I am sure
his eyes are heavily laden
with lust".His eyes,
are they any less?
"She has decided
in an instance to extract
a big price, need to conceal well
emotions like an unfinished sculpture,
till the exact time to unveil"
he gets his report, immediately acts,
her face falls with a thud.

I

What’s become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who’d have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow’s accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through the merry weather,
The snowiest in all December;
I left his arm that night myself
For what’s-his-name’s, the new prose-poet,
That wrote the book there, on the shelf—
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day?
Never looked he half so gay!

He was prouder than the devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!
Ay, and many other meetings,
Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
As up and down he paced this London,
With no work done, but great works undone,
Where scarce twenty knew his name.
Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
Written, bustled? Who’s to blame
If your silence kept unbroken?
“True, but there were sundry jottings,
Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs and blottings,
Certain first steps were achieved
Already which—(is that your meaning?)
Had well borne out whoe’er believed
In more to come!” But who goes gleaning
Hedge-side chance-blades, while full-sheaved
Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o’erweening
Pride alone, puts forth such claims
O’er the day’s distinguished names.

Meantime, how much I loved him,
I find out now I’ve lost him:
I, who cared not if I moved him,
Henceforth never shall get free
Of his ghostly company,
His eyes that just a little wink
As deep I go into the merit
Of this and that distinguished spirit—
His cheeks’ raised colour, soon to sink,
As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrend-ous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman­’s latest piece of graphic.
Nay, my very wrist grows warm
With his dragging weight of arm!
E’en so, swimmingly appears,
Through one’s after-supper musings,
Some lost Lady of old years,
With her beauteous vain endeavour,
And goodness unrepaid as ever;
The face, accustomed to refusings,
We, puppies that we were… Oh never
Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
Telling aught but honest truth to?
What a sin, had we centupled
Its possessor’s grace and sweetness!
No! she heard in its completeness
Truth, for truth’s a weighty matter,
And, truth at issue, we can’t flatter!
Well, ’tis done with: she’s exempt
From damning us through such a sally;
And so she glides, as down a valley,
Taking up with her contempt,
Past our reach; and in, the flowers
Shut her unregarded hours.


Oh, could I have him back once more,
This Waring, but one half-day more!
Back, with the quiet face of yore,
So hungry for acknowledgment
Like mine! I’d fool him to his bent!
Feed, should not he, to heart’s content?
I’d say, “to only have conceived
Your great works, though they ne’er make progress,
Surpasses all we’ve yet achieved!”
I’d lie so, I should be believed.
I’d make such havoc of the claims
Of the day’s distinguished names
To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
Her sharp-toothed golden-crowned child!
Or, as one feasts a creature rarely
Captured here, unreconciled
To capture; and completely gives
Its pettish humours licence, barely
Requiring that it lives.

Ichabod, Ichabod,
The glory is departed!
Travels Waring East away?
Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
Reports a man upstarted
Somewhere as a God,
Hordes grown European-hearted,
Millions of the wild made tame
On a sudden at his fame?
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
Or who, in Moscow, toward the Czar,
With the demurest of footfalls
Over the Kremlin’s pavement, bright
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps, with five other generals,
That simultaneously take *****,
For each to have pretext enough
To kerchiefwise unfurl his sash
Which, softness’ self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no ****?
Waring, in Moscow, to those rough
Cold northern natures borne, perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear
From the circle of mute kings,
Unable to repress the tear,
Each as his sceptre down he flings,
To Dian’s fane at Taurica,
Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach,
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where bred the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!
In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely, ’tis in Spain
That we and Waring meet again—
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine—abrupt as when there’s slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall
From some black coffin-lid.
Or, best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint;
Back here to London did he slink;
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-paint:
Some garret’s ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o’er and o’er
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore:
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favour yet, to pity won
By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,—
“Give me my so long promised son,
Let Waring end what I begun!”
Then down he creeps and out he steals
Only when the night conceals
His face—in Kent ’tis cherry-time,
Or, hops are picking; or, at prime
Of March, he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,
Some mild eve when woods grew sappy,
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;
While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
Made as if they were the throng
That crowd around and carry aloft
The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
Out of a myriad noises soft,
Into a tone that can endure
Amid the noise of a July noon,
When all God’s creatures crave their boon,
All at once and all in tune,
And get it, happy as Waring then,
Having first within his ken
What a man might do with men,
And far too glad, in the even-glow,
To mix with your world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so—
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
Oh, Waring, what’s to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick—say—out shall not he
The heart of Hamlet’s mystery pluck
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius—am I right?—shall tuck
His sleeve, and out with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!
Some one shall somehow run amuck
With this old world, for want of strife
Sound asleep: contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who’s alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now:
Distinguished names!—but ’tis, somehow
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!

II

“When I last saw Waring…”
(How all turned to him who spoke—
You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
In land-travel, or seafaring?)

“…We were sailing by Triest,
Where a day or two we harboured:
A sunset was in the West,
When, looking over the vessel’s side,
One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard.
And, as a sea-duck flies and swins
At once, so came the light craft up,
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o’er its planks, a shrill voice cried
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar’s)
‘Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
A Pilot for you to Triest?
Without one, look you ne’er so big,
They’ll never let you up the bay!
We natives should know best.’
I turned, and ‘just those fellows’ way,’
Our captain said, ‘The long-shore thieves
Are laughing at us in their sleeves.’

“In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
And one, half-hidden by his side
Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
With great grass hat, and kerchief black,
Who looked up, with his kingly throat,
Said somewhat, while the other shook
His hair back from his eyes to look
Their longest at us; then the boat,
I know not how, turned sharply round,
Laying her whole side on the sea
As a leaping fish does; from the lee
Into the weather, cut somehow
Her sparkling path beneath our bow;
And so went off, as with a bound,
Into the rose and golden half
Of the sky, to overtake the sun,
And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
Its singing cave; yet I caught one
Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
And neither time nor toil could mar
Those features: so I saw the last
Of Waring!”—You? Oh, never star
Was lost here, but it rose afar!
Look East, where whole new thousands are!
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

It was early fall,
the leaves were vibrant
when I crawled to the bar,
catch myself a weekend buzz.

Fred’s drinks were pure trouble,
more jet fuel than mixer.
I mean you could torch your breath
after just one sip.
Rock blared there like a live concert,
loud enough to make you a deaf mute
after just one drink.
The dark walls swirled,
moved in & out, carnival-like,
I purred-down
Jack-elixirs.

I first saw her shining
from across the Mahogany bar.
She was hidden in the shadows,
a real good looker.
Her amber hair was crazy,
blowing everywhere
like the bride of the stitched-man,
electrode-neck.

She might have been a ******
or a nose-candy queen,
but after what the bartender gave me,
it really didn’t matter,
life was played ******* the edge
in them days.

I was enthalled with her,
captivated by her lady-vibes,
she was the perfect last call.
We sang rock and roll songs
in my 455 rocket, crawled
the back roads,
looped
all the way
to my country-place.

We were on auto-pilot,
dropped our guards,
fell into each other’s embrace.
She smelled like salty-patchouli,
had a killer innocent-face,
kissed me with fire,
such strong desire,
a beautiful-wantonness.
Her eyes were so red & green,
indeed she was
the consummate,
the prettiest,
late-night dream girl.

She was bathed in bright ink,
the sun, the moon, the stars,
vividly scrawled on her back
along with a frowning-tiger.
Above her privacy, I spied
a smiling-gnome
with outstretched arms
screaming, “I Wuv You.”

I obliged him,
there was no fighting
her ***** to the wall demeanor.
We shook the planet,
frolicked way past the wee hours,
deep into the noon hour.

When the earth-shattering stopped,
I was hung over on her & the jp4.
We crashed still trashed,
I still don’t know
how I ever got her home.

Betwixt the shrub and hubabubb
'neath bracken's shadowed scowl
came a Wren pop-hopping when
arrested by a yowl

He spied another grovely bird
chattering with the gloom
realising it had been observed
it screeked with spittled spume

Stay back, stay back
alack, alack
I've nothing left to give
and should you shake the life from me
unhappy you shall live

Like him the grovely had a one leg
and too the veshy eye
and when he flexed his deeker wings
he knew this bird must die.

The unctuous Wren popped back and forth
as did the groveley bird
and there they stood 'twix shrub and earth
exchanging not a word.

Just this once I'll let you go
announced the cautious Wren
he turned his fractious beak to blow
and was never seen again.

When Coyote witnessed
the Creator making this world
he thought
I will make a world like that
for myself

And so he formed a copy
of every living thing
from the mud
from the branches
and detritus that he gathered
there on the banks
of the Columbia River

But all of his
carefully wrought figures
elk and deer
fish that sparkle in the shallows
black bear
who hides from two-leggeds
the wings of the air
who mingle with the leaves and branches of the forest
all melted back into the mud
of the riverbank
at the next rain

Undeterred
Coyote set out
on a quest

He found a new country
a pleasant land of vast expanse
with every manner of good things

When Coyote came into this country
his hunger
was greater than myth
sharp as the edge of a knife

And there he spied Crow
on a high cliff
with a mouth full
of deer fat

A plan quickly formed
in the caverns of his cunning

Coyote called out
Chief Crow
I am told that your voice
is as sweet as spring water
as pleasing as a woman
in the night

Sing for me
Great Chief
and I will reward you richly

Crow is a vain creature
and being called Chief
gave him great pleasure

He preened
opened his silver wings to the sun
and sang his rough song
but in a muted tone
in order to save
his delicious morsel

Coyote called out again
Oh Chief!
That wasn't much.
not like the stories
I have been told.
Please sing your song again
with feeling!

Crow rose to his full height
****** his sharp beak
into the air
and gave full voice
to his raucous song
for the sake of every crow
on earth

We know the end of this tale
because Coyote taught it
to our ancestors

The deer fat fell to the ground
and Coyote
trickster
scarfed it in an instant

Hunger dampened
he ambled along the well-beaten path
to find the next fool

And that is the story
of Coyote and Crow.
Keep your pride in check
or be the next one laid low.

On a long stretch of highway
his thumb to the road,
Leon set off to lighten his load.
No thoughts of tomorrow
no plans set in stone
just a few hundred bucks,
and a dream of his own.

Leon was weary of playing the game.
His boss and his girl,
they both thought the same.
Their griping and wanting
was keeping him tied
to a life that he loathed,
left him weary inside.

He would act on an impulse,
and finally be free
to do as he liked, and be who he'd be.
A fantasy stirring could finally come true!
No end to the wonderful things he could do.

For hours he walked,
while the headlights flashed by
light on his feet and a smile to the sky.
While on that same blacktop
Jenny drove on
anxious to make it to Phoenix by dawn.

It may have been fate or say what you will
that she spied him on time
as she came up the hill.
Surely this guy must be needing a ride
so she pulled to the shoulder,
letting Leon inside.

Jenny felt guarded while driving along,
not accustomed to helping who didn't belong
in the world that she lived,
and the life that she led,
ain't it funny how sometimes we do what we dread?

Her worries subsided in such a short while,
for he talked with such ease.
He had such a nice smile!
It's true what they say,
you just never know
who you might meet if you give it a go.

Just outside Phoenix the sun started rising
when Leon said "Jenny, ain't it surprising?
I feel like I've known you my entire life."
The last words she heard,
as he pulled out his knife.

Ain't it funny how sometimes we do what we dread?
Leon's still dreaming,
while Jenny lies dead.



.

fore you guys start reading this, I would like to give you a brief overview of what it’s about. First of all,  I think it’s extremely unhealthy and can only lead to bad things even when you’re in the happiest of relationships. A week ago, I received a very detailed message in the page’s inbox, the first words were “My Confession”. It was from a man who wanted to share his mental weight with someone, anyone. So I started reading it, and it made me tear up after each line. This is about a man (who wishes to remain anonymous), a man who spied on his girlfriend because of his insecurities and trust issues, but the way it ends is just brutal. I’ve edited a few parts out, parts that were a little too much to handle. Believe me, editing this entire piece wasn’t easy, but the guy wanted it published, he wanted to world to see the dark side of relationships, and so here it is. I hope you guys have an easier time reading it than I did while editing it. It’s going to be in his own words, exactly how he sent it (with a few parts cut out because of certain restrictions).

My Confession: I spied on my girlfriend for a month, she’s my ex now

Hey “A” and “Z”, I’ve been an avid fan of yours for over two years now. I just LOVE the way you talk about relationships and how pure they are, it kind of burns my heart sometimes because I never received that purity, all I got was trauma and hatred out of love. I don’t know you guys personally but I love your work and I know you guys help people out too while keeping things anonymous. I would like to send in my confession, confession of spying on my girlfriend for a month. This wasn’t easy, writing all of this down just reminded me of what I went through, but I badly want to share it with someone. I actually want the world to know that relationships aren’t all “happy and nice”, some relationships are straight up brutal! While I gave it my all, it just wasn’t enough, and I had to find the truth through different means, means I’m not proud of today but I’m at a better place knowing that I’m not being made a fool of anymore.

Her name was *. We met through work, she used to work in the same place as I. We started off being very normal friends. Slowly but surely, our conversations started becoming meaningful, they went from being “just about work” to “about life”. This is where she started showing me her weak side, and it was pretty weak. I believe that when a woman shows you her vulnerabilities, she wants you to be in her life. And after a few months, I started having feelings for her, they just kind of developed on their own. I started noticing the increase in the number of calls, messages, hangouts etc. It was all happening so naturally and I was falling deeper in love with her. At this point, I was still too afraid to ask her out because we had a good friendship going and I didn’t want to ruin it. But this had its toll on me, I started getting possessive about her, it started bothering me. She used to have this other friend at work, he was better looking than I was, and I’d always been pretty insecure about my looks, so I started creating a distance from her and thought she’d be better off without me (yeah, I’m pretty pessimistic about myself).

After a few days, she noticed the change in the way I talk to her and she started complaining. That’s when she showed me the first sign of “having feelings” for me. That’s when I realised that I stand a chance and I shouldn’t be afraid. So, after a lot of hours of overthinking, I asked her out. To my surprise, she said yes instantly! I was over the roof! I can’t even describe the feeling in words, I just can’t. I was euphoric, I hadn’t felt such happiness before in my life. To be accepted by someone you have feelings for is a huge feeling, more than words can describe. So we started going out. Our entire office knew about our relationship, even the “good looking guy” (keep him in mind, he is important to this). We were crazy together! Exactly how you guys describe “good and healthy relationships” in your articles and page, we were exactly like that. We used to read your articles together and tell each other how happy we are and how many good qualities match.

Things were going pretty good for us. We used to have our usual fights and arguments, but they were pretty simple and used to sort of fix themselves. It was heaven for me, I’m not kidding, heaven. It was surreal. Even after 7 months of dating, we never got bored of each other. Things were just awesome. Except for one thing, she had a habit of using her phone a lot, even when we were hanging out, she used her phone 90% of the time in intervals. I used to complain about it from time to time but it never used to work. Technology these days, it can work both ways, for both good and evil. With apps like Snapchat, Whatsapp etc. you can basically do anything with anyone without the world knowing about it, it’s that scary.



I slowly started getting paranoid when I noticed that she’s online on Whatsapp even after we are done talking and we’ve said our “goodnights” and “I love yous”. Her “Last Seen” was off so I never knew when she was actually sleeping. I never discussed this with her but I spoke to a friend about it. He said it’s nothing. He said that it’s probably a bug that shows the wrong status of being online. And I wanted to believe that, so I trusted in that statement and let it go. But deep down, my paranoia was still growing more every day. But believe me, I tried fighting it as much as I could. I even started getting “busy” tones more often when I called her. She used to tell me she was talking to her brother (who lived in another state). And I used to try to believe her.

One day, it happened. We were out for dinner and she had gone to the bathroom, this time she didn’t take her phone with her (she always used to take it with her). My heart started racing because I badly wanted to have a look inside that phone, I wanted to see if something was being hidden from me, If I was being lied to. But I also didn’t want to be more paranoid, so I tried fighting myself. But after a few seconds, I justified it in my head. I told myself that I’m probably not going to find anything, and then I’m probably going to be mad at myself for looking and it’ll all go smoothly. It didn’t go that way. I opened her phone up (it didn’t have a passcode on it), and I went straight to Whatsapp. I found a very long and intimate conversation she was having with the same good looking guy from the office. It went on and on, in great detail. They used to meet up, she used to go over to his place (while I was told that she’s going over to a friend’s house). It was all there, right in my hands, a year’s worth of relationship down the drain. A year’s worth of feelings down the drain. It was bad, my hands were shaking and I couldn’t feel anything for a few minutes. But I wanted to catch her cheating, so I got a grip of myself, held my tears and put the phone back.

And that’s when I started “spying” on her. I used to be very aware of what she was saying, of where she’s going etc. I was heartbroken but I tried my best to be the same in front of her, to not show any sign of sorrow or regret but it was killing me inside to not push her out of my life. It was disgusting. One fine day, she told me she was going to her “friend’s” house. And I actually followed her in a friend’s car. I followed her all the way to the house. It was the same house, the house I was hoping it not to be. The guy’s house, the good looking guy. After ten minutes of waiting outside, I went and knocked at the door. It was him, with a very weird smile on his face, as he looked at me in a state of shock. I forced myself inside (at this point I wasn’t even feeling normal anymore, I was filled with rage) and saw her in his bedroom. I just stood there, looking at her in silence, the tears started flowing right out in front of her and I left, without saying a word. I instantly blocked her from every possible means of communication. She tried contacting my friends, but none of them let her get near me.

It’s been five months since that incident, and I still have a lot of questions that I need answers to, but I just don’t want to spend another minute with her, I just don’t want to waste another feeling on her. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love again, but I surely won’t let anyone play me for a fool again. So, for everyone who’s reading this, please don’t let your feelings go to someone who doesn’t deserve them. Please don’t get cheated on. And for those who have similar experiences, you’re not alone.

Thank you guys for reading this, I would be very happy if you posted this on your website, I really want to know what people have to say about this. Thank you.

Talk to me

If you guys have anything to say to him, please let him know in the comments below, he is going to read them all. As always, stay blessed and keep the love alive.

201

Two swimmers wrestled on the spar—
Until the morning sun—
When One—turned smiling to the land—
Oh God! the Other One!

The stray ships—passing—
Spied a face—
Upon the waters borne—
With eyes in death—still begging raised—
And hands—beseeching—thrown!

Tsk tsk tossed
go out
Your suggestions.

Whisk whisk washed
flow south
Your directions.

Hiss hiss sorry
no time for
sage reflections.

Songs you sang will not be sung
Nor any tales of strength believed.

The brain embodied in such young
Must think it he first to perceive.

Ask every man
Who first made sparks?
From rocks to barks?
Blinding night and fooling fear?

Wholly gone ghost
Our first bright creature
He harnessed fire
Then disappeared.


Realizations when thought anew
Seem to skip from us awry.

So no Salutes
nor an ovation
For those who fostered
Us will be spied.

Gods truth your lips bespoke to youth
Yet still it's not their time to hear.
For these ears are full of magic
And your end rolls
Crushing near.

When spring, to woods and wastes around,
  Brought bloom and joy again,
The murdered traveller's bones were found,
  Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung
  Her tassels in the sky;
And many a vernal blossom sprung,
  And nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
  His hanging nest o'erhead,
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
  Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,
  And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
  Were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
  The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
  Unarmed, and hard beset;--

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
  The northern dawn was red,
The mountain wolf and wild-cat stole
  To banquet on the dead;--

Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
  They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked his grave with nameless stones,
  Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
  Within his distant home;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
  For joy that he was come.

Long, long they looked--but never spied
  His welcome step again,
Nor knew the fearful death he died
  Far down that narrow glen.

How do you feel about this and that?

A cockroach stealing your children's dreams of a bright and peaceful future?

Watching a mongoloid getting backhanded by a ******* with a heart of gold?

The unknowable can't be evacuated by an atomic bomb.

Knowledge cannot be enthralled by microbiology.

Peace CAN & WILL shatter into fragments by the use of clinical drugs.

Fun finds the cure for cancer in a twisted upbringing that you and your siblings will never be blessed to experience.

Trust can trigger an avalanche of facts, AND satanism should generally avoid including sexuality.

Mary Magdalene turns boring things into ****** tension like peace inspires fundamentally skewered acts of protests.

Our world leaders briefly researching painful mutilations in an ancient garden in Greece, while suggestively grabbing handfuls of lost gifts in a church made from human bones.

How are you feeling about this mess of words I've sewn together?  

Televised revolutions are deeply advertising etched foreskins of death like Disney World sells us dates with Mickey Mouse and his muse Minnie as Donald poses as Adolf ******.   

Watch your friends fade and die as they disobediently blow away blue swamps at your feet, never even bothering you with a decent goodbye.  

There's a supply and demand on our radios briefly warning us of fearful flesh in the background of a dark ash filled sky, gently driving away from mysteries spied through a peephole.

I would have cried briefly, if worshiping premonitions in the shadows was good human behavior...But it's not..

Your sisters are daintily self-destructing emergency shelters dancing w/ both hands in your pockets while vomiting their lunches into fine porcelain. Aren't we lucky?

I am happily reusing substances
and creating electrifying populations with clay and words. A seamstress of sorts I suppose.  But I'm no artist.

Pentecostalism might be able to rid the world of a nightmare and your wildest dream might have been known to lead to a disorder that hasn't yet been but already has five matter of fact cures.

The Bible courses through the veins of vengeance like physics can be used to detect our long-term relationship with Santa Christ. Satan and I think this is exciting!

Complex religious designs can be combined with gracelessness in the name of American eye-candy.  We can be uncomfortable if it's entangled with destiny. Of this I am certain.

First, I spotted the gaggle sagging innocently enough,
One might say blissfully reflected in the laptop screen.
Then out of nowhere came the phrase, "whodunit?”
And from the hanging sag, a sly, silky, voice whispered,
"Ahhh, don't stop before the good part."

Clearly a few clues were left behind, wispy hair strands,
Scattered age spots, skin tags, a few moles, posed upon a
Pale listless, crinkly, lightly pimpled, surface, and from a
Wrinkly, shallow crevasse a voice teased,
"Ahhh, don't stop before the good part."

Totally hooked, curiosity piqued, southward I spied,
A once upon a time perky, treasure chest, half hidden,
Now two solemn, empty grain sacks laid east to west,
And close to death but not quite, lazily they muttered,
"Ahhh, don't stop before the good part."

The final chapter, an ancient, untold mystery solved,
No crime, no villain, nothing stolen, only flesh alchemy,
Where a plateau of supple, touchable, skin once resided,
A lumpy, bumpy, flabby flesh pillow lolled, and it murmured,
“Ahhh, Boston cream pie, a quick nap, that's the ticket."

208

The Rose did caper on her cheek—
Her Bodice rose and fell—
Her pretty speech—like drunken men—
Did stagger pitiful—

Her fingers fumbled at her work—
Her needle would not go—
What ailed so smart a little Maid—
It puzzled me to know—

Till opposite—I spied a cheek
That bore another Rose—
Just opposite—Another speech
That like the Drunkard goes—

A Vest that like her Bodice, danced—
To the immortal tune—
Till those two troubled—little Clocks
Ticked softly into one.

Once, and but once found in thy company,
All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is questioned there
By all the men that have been robed that year,
So am I (by this traiterous means surprized)
By thy hydroptic father catechized.
Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to **** a cockatrice,
Though he hath oft sworn that he would remove
Thy beauty’s beauty, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen,
Yet close and secret, as our souls, we’ve been.
Though thy immortal mother, which doth lie
Still-buried in her bed, yet wiil not die,
Takes this advantage to sleep out daylight,
And watch thy entries and returns all night,
And, when she takes thy hand, and would seem kind,
Doth search what rings and armlets she can find,
And kissing, notes the colour of thy face,
And fearing lest thou’rt swol’n, doth thee embrace;
To try if thou long, doth name strange meats,
And notes thy paleness, blushing, sighs, and sweats;
And politicly will to thee confess
The sins of her own youth’s rank lustiness;
Yet love these sorceries did remove, and move
Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.
Thy little brethren, which like faery sprites
Oft skipped into our chamber, those sweet nights,
And kissed, and ingled on thy father’s knee,
Were bribed next day to tell what they did see:
The grim eight-foot-high iron-bound servingman,
That oft names God in oaths, and only then,
He that to bar the first gate doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride,
Which, if in hell no other pains there were,
Makes me fear hell, because he must be there:
Though by thy father he were hired to this,
Could never witness any touch or kiss.
But Oh, too common ill, I brought with me
That which betrayed me to my enemy:
A loud perfume, which at my entrance cried
Even at thy father’s nose, so were we spied;
When, like a tyran King, that in his bed
Smelt gunpowder, the pale wretch shivered.
Had it been some bad smell he would have thought
That his own feet, or breath, that smell had wrought.
But as we in our isle imprisoned,
Where cattle only, and diverse dogs are bred,
The precious Unicorns strange monsters call,
So thought he good, strange, that had none at all.
I taught my silks their whistling to forbear,
Even my oppressed shoes dumb and speechless were,
Only, thou bitter sweet, whom I had laid
Next me, me traiterously hast betrayed,
And unsuspected hast invisibly
At once fled unto him, and stayed with me.
Base excrement of earth, which dost confound
Sense from distinguishing the sick from sound;
By thee the seely amorous ***** his death
By drawing in a leprous harlot’s breath;
By thee the greatest stain to man’s estate
Falls on us, to be called effeminate;
Though you be much loved in the Prince’s hall,
There, things that seem, exceed substantial.
Gods, when ye fumed on altars, were pleased well,
Because you were burnt, not that they liked your smell;
You’re loathsome all, being taken simply alone,
Shall we love ill things joined, and hate each one?
If you were good, your good doth soon decay;
And you are rare, that takes the good away.
All my perfumes I give most willingly
T’ embalm thy father’s corse; What? will he die?

You may talk o’ gin and beer
When you’re quartered safe out ‘ere,
An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ‘im that’s got it.
Now in Injia’s sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin’ of ‘Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
      He was “Din! Din! Din!
  You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din!
      Hi! slippery hitherao!
      Water, get it!  Panee lao!
  You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.”

The uniform ‘e wore
Was nothin’ much before,
An’ rather less than ‘arf o’ that be’ind,
For a piece o’ twisty rag
An’ a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment ‘e could find.
When the sweatin’ troop-train lay
In a sidin’ through the day,
Where the ‘eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl,
We shouted “Harry By!”
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped ‘im ‘cause ‘e couldn’t serve us all.
      It was “Din! Din! Din!
  You ‘eathen, where the mischief ‘ave you been?
      You put some juldee in it
      Or I’ll marrow you this minute
  If you don’t fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!”

‘E would dot an’ carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An’ ‘e didn’t seem to know the use o’ fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin’ nut,
‘E’d be waitin’ fifty paces right flank rear.
With ‘is mussick on ‘is back,
‘E would skip with our attack,
An’ watch us till the bugles made “Retire”,
An’ for all ‘is ***** ‘ide
‘E was white, clear white, inside
When ‘e went to tend the wounded under fire!
      It was “Din! Din! Din!”
  With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green.
      When the cartridges ran out,
      You could hear the front-files shout,
  “Hi! ammunition-mules an’ Gunga Din!”

I shan’t forgit the night
When I dropped be’ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should ‘a’ been.
I was chokin’ mad with thirst,
An’ the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din.
‘E lifted up my ‘ead,
An’ he plugged me where I bled,
An’ ‘e guv me ‘arf-a-pint o’ water-green:
It was crawlin’ and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I’ve drunk,
I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
      It was “Din! Din! Din!
  ‘Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ‘is spleen;
      ‘E’s chawin’ up the ground,
      An’ ‘e’s kickin’ all around:
  For Gawd’s sake *** the water, Gunga Din!”

‘E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean.
‘E put me safe inside,
An’ just before ‘e died,
“I ‘ope you liked your drink”, sez Gunga Din.
So I’ll meet ‘im later on
At the place where ‘e is gone—
Where it’s always double drill and no canteen;
‘E’ll be squattin’ on the coals
Givin’ drink to poor ****** souls,
An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
      Yes, Din! Din! Din!
  You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
      Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
      By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
  You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

pictures don't capture essence
though some fools try
fleeting and impermanence define
as moments pass us by
to put things in a mason jar
to try and save a part of life
and miss out on the majesty
of rare occasions, lucky spied
it's never the same

She

I'm waiting for the man I hope to wed.
I've never seen him - that's the funny part.
I promised I would wear a rose of red,
Pinned on my coat above my fluttered heart,
So that he'd know me - a precaution wise,
Because I wrote him I was twenty-three,
And Oh such heaps and heaps of silly lies. . .
So when we meet what will he think of me?

It's funny, but it has its sorry side;
I put an advert. in the evening Press:
"A lonely maiden fain would be a bride."
Oh it was shameless of me, I confess.
But I am thirty-nine and in despair,
Wanting a home and children ere too late,
And I forget I'm no more young and fair -
I'll hide my rose and run...No, no, I'll wait.

An hour has passed and I am waiting still.
I ought to feel relieved, but I'm so sad.
I would have liked to see him, just to thrill,
And sigh and say: "There goes my lovely lad!
My one romance!" Ah, Life's malign mishap!
"Garcon, a cafè creme." I'll stay till nine. . .
The cafè's empty, just an oldish chap
Who's sitting at the table next to mine. . .

He

I'm waiting for the girl I mean to wed.
She was to come at eight and now it's nine.
She'd pin upon her coat a rose of red,
And I would wear a marguerite in mine.
No sign of her I see...It's true my eyes
Need stronger glasses than the ones I wear,
But Oh I feel my heart would recognize
Her face without the rose - she is so fair.

Ah! what deceivers are we aging men!
What vanity keeps youthful hope aglow!
Poor girl! I sent a photo taken when
I was a student, twenty years ago.
(Hers is so Springlike, Oh so blossom sweet!)
How she will shudder when she sees me now!
I think I'd better hide that marguerite -
How can I age and ugliness avow?

She does not come. It's after nine o'clock.
What fools we fogeys are! I'll try to laugh;
(Garcon, you might bring me another bock)
Falling in love, just from a photograph.
Well, that's the end. I'll go home and forget,
Then realizing I am over ripe
I'll throw away this silly cigarette
And philosophically light my pipe.

* * * * *

The waiter brought the coffee and the beer,
And there they sat, so woe-begone a pair,
And seemed to think: "Why do we linger here?"
When suddenly they turned, to start and stare.
She spied a marguerite, he glimpsed a rose;
Their eyes were joined and in a flash they knew. . .
The sleepy waiter saw, when time to close,
The sweet romance of those deceiving two,
Whose lips were joined, their hearts, their future too.

On the Emerald Isle when the brier's green,
Occur strange sights seldom seen.
There's golden rainbows and small clay pipes,
And wee folk dancing every night.

I've heard stories of the leprechaun, but
Before I see 'em they're usually gone.
Yet one green misty night in the brier,
I saw them jigging round the fire.

Sean and I were in green Irish woods,
Gathering shamrocks and just being good.
While searching near a hidden creek,
We heard faint giggles from fifty feet.

Near the giggles grew a small green fire,
Perhaps six inches high - no higher.
We crouched low for a better look,
To our surprise we saw a small green cook.

He wore a tall green hat and pulled-up socks,
And stirred a *** of simmering shamrocks.
Smoke curled from his pipe of clay,
Why, I remember his grin still today.

A band of gold encircled his brim,
My little finger seemed bigger than him.
He had golden buckles and a puggish nose,
Glimmering eyes and curly toes.

Sweet music floated on wings of air,
Fifty-one leprechauns were dancing near.
They passed the poteen with a smack of their lips,
As each in turn took a good Gaelic sip.

Suddenly the gaiety quickly slowed down.
Sure we were that we'd been found.
But they all looked north with reverent faces,
Bowed their heads, stood still in their places.

The banshee's wailing was heard afar,
O'erhead the Death Coach had a full car.
The wee folk respect, it must be said,
Erin's children when they're dead.

Soon flying fast through the green night air,
We spied King Darby hurrying near.
He rode atop his beloved steed,
O'er dales and glens, woods and mead.

His hummingbird lighted on a leaf,
And all the wee folk knelt beneath.
With a golden smile he waved to all,
To officially begin The Leprechaun Ball.

Tiny green fiddlers fiddled their fiddles,
That sounded just like ten thousand giggles.
Dancers danced on mists of green,
Pipers piped, but none were seen.

They danced and ate and passed the ladle,
And kicked up their heels to Irish reels.
We enjoyed the sight late into the night,
But suddenly they gave us a terrible fright.

They saw us cowering behind the trees,
So they cast a spell which made us freeze.
We'd heard what happens to caught spies,
That now are spiders, toads or flies.

Well, old King Darby drew us near,
Sean and I were in a terrible fear.
With a grin and a snap he made us small,
And requested our presence at the Leprechaun Ball.

We reeled and laughed with our new found friends,
'Til the green mist lifted to signal the end.
With a glean in his eye the good King said:
"'Tis sure'n the hour yous be abed."

He waved his shillelagh to return our height,
Wished us well and bade good-night.
And as they rode the winds away
I suddenly remembered it was St. Patrick's Day.

I'm sure the lot of you think me a blarney liar, but that night I assure you
I danced 'round a green fire.

In rows like crumpled paper set,
The way one might design a brooch,
There sets a sparkle down so purely
Capital, beyond reproach and sure
She is the blackest flea who sits
Upon an old green dog, now should

You query, her name's a pond.  In Gaelic
It's pronounced: Baile Átha Cliath—
But in Irish she's plain, mightily named,
Dublin.  Where broods the dove, linnet
And swan.  Now take them pi'jons, they got
Dank habits and linnets lament the silent

Stones.  Sure, the goose gave out and took
To the air, but the swans, they've landed,
To roost, enchanted as 'Children of Lir,'
And so becomes a changeling child's
Fair city, for in her anointed proximity,
Gracious white birds do bathe and molt,

Supplied as I can tell, she looks black-
Pooled in clusters, long side her creases.
Stout nectar flows in near every nook
And cranny, but yer man, he's never
Busy, that malty fish, daftly avoids,
Swimming spirals round like buggies

Do on petals, he'd rather grace gardens
By drinking their dew.  O Dublin town,
She wends her ways and rows her houses
Round-a-bout on cobbled shores in tribute
To sprite, deary and fey, Anna Livia—
Who like a stem of blood, stabs right

To the heart of Dublin Bay— and proud
As a crowned thorny, who once had reeked,
She's bloomed large, into one grandeous
Beauty, like a céilí so finely fiddled—
A sandy, spirited, bombastic beach-
Flower, she is, a flag so fitting upon

The doons.  In dream, I flocked to her
Like the wild geese and saw her coy'd
Repose and there I spied, from mackerel
Skies— one monstrous, Irish rose!

The man to my right was more than eight feet away. I was going to have to move closer to him to catch my limit of four trout. I halved the distance between the two of us and noted the sideways glance he shot me. I apologized immediately and asked if I was crowding him.
     “No, you fine,” he replied within a thick Serbian accent.
     “You’re with them?” I asked, pointing to the crowd of people on the bridge some 30 feet upstream from us. I had heard the crowd of eastern Europeans talking earlier, and their accents were unmistakable to me. He nodded and we continued fishing.
     With my new angle I was better able to pick my fish in the water, so that’s what I did. I spied one and tossed my jig toward him. It took five casts but eventually, he took the bait. As I netted it in the swift, ice-cold spring water the man beside me congratulated me on the catch. I thanked him and added it to my stringer. This made three, and I only needed one more.
     “What’s your name?” I asked him.
     “Ivan”.
     “Have you been in the states long?” I asked, after the pause following his short reply seemed to invite more questions.
     “Since ‘96, my family live here. It is good.”
     “You like living here?” I wondered aloud.
     “Yes, the fishing is good. It is like back home in Serbia, or in Germany. We have this fishing there.”
     “You mean trout?”
     “Yes, trout...and some other fish like these, in water like this, but I can’t go home now.” He looked away momentarily. His lips pursed, and his brow furrowed. I pulled my line in, wanting to ask him more and not wanting to be distracted.
     “Were you in the war?”
     “Yes, I was in the Serbian police force.” My heart pounded. “When I was in the Serbian police force, we did what you see on the news. We went into villages and we killed them. We killed them all.”
     I cast my line back into the water, spying another trout. Ivan shrugged and cast his own line. I couldn’t tell what he was using but it looked like cheese of some kind. “I was drafted in Serb police when I was 15. I had no choice. If I refuse, they **** me. I did what I had to do.” I nodded, and ****** my line, missing a fish. “Before the war, I fished. After the war, there were not so many people, so fishing was very good.”
     The air around me was alive. The trees were greener, the water was colder and clearer, the sun was brighter, and the sky was bluer.
     “I’ve been fishing for a long time as well,” I responded. My father used to bring me here as a child. He nodded and continued.
     “After the war, all the fish come back, no one fished during the war, so there were many of them. You just had to be careful of the mines.” He grunted and gazed skyward.
     “The mines?”
     “Yes, during the war they mined the water.”
     I watched trout number four take my jig and I carefully reeled him in. Ivan congratulated me a second time, and I thanked him in return.
“You’re a good fisherman,” he said turning back to his own pursuit of the four-trout limit, as I left the water to clean my catch.