Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss,
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
  Say first—for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell—say first what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the World besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
  Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed, and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
  Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice has prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set,
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to th’ utmost pole.
Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side,
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:—
  “If thou beest he—but O how fallen! how changed
From him who, in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads, though bright!—if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest
From what height fallen: so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder; and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contentions brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire—that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
And this empyreal sybstance, cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.”
  So spake th’ apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:—
  “O Prince, O Chief of many throned Powers
That led th’ embattled Seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event
That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat,
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and heavenly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate’er his business be,
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep?
What can it the avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?”
  Whereto with speedy words th’ Arch-Fiend replied:—
“Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure—
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see! the angry Victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid
The fiery surge that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair.”
  Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th’ ocean-stream.
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as ****** tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn
On Man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
  Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward ***** their pointing spires, and,rolled
In billows, leave i’ th’ midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights—if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
And such appeared in hue as when the force
Of subterranean wind transprots a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.
  “Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,”
Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat
That we must change for Heaven?—this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor—one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reigh secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th’ associates and co-partners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on th’ oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion, or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?”
  So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub
Thus answered:—”Leader of those armies bright
Which, but th’ Omnipotent, none could have foiled!
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers—heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle, when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal—they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lie
Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed;
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height!”
  He scare had ceased when the superior Fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast. The broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear—to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand—
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marl, not like those steps
On Heaven’s azure; and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
His legions—Angel Forms, who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He called so loud that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded:—”Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the Flower of Heaven—once yours; now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern
Th’ advantage, and, descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!”
  They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their General’s voice they soon obeyed
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day,
Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile;
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till, as a signal given, th’ uplifted spear
Of their great Sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen ***** to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith, form every squadron and each band,
The heads and leaders thither haste where stood
Their great Commander—godlike Shapes, and Forms
Excelling human; princely Dignities;
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones,
Though on their names in Heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names, till, wandering o’er the earth,
Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man,
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and th’ invisible
Glory of him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities:
Then were they known to men by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world.
  Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,
Roused fr

A forgotten poem by Henry Brooke ( Irish Dramatist/Novelist)

Taken from poetrynook.com http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/universal-beauty-book-3-lines-301%C3%B4%C3%A7%C3%B4400

Or cool recess of odoriferous shade,
And fan the peasant in the panting glade;
Or lace the coverture of painted bower,
While from the enamell'd roof the sweet profusions shower.
Here duplicate, the range divides beneath,
Above united in a mantling wreath;
With continuity protracts delight,
Imbrown'd in umbrage of ambiguous night;
Perspicuous the vista charms our eye,
And opens, Janus like, to either sky;
Or stills attention to the feather'd song,
While echo doubles from the warbling throng.

Here, winding to the sun's magnetic ray,
The solar plants adore the lord of day,
With Persian rites idolatrous incline,
And worship towards his consecrated shrine;
By south from east to west obsequious turn,
And moved with sympathetic ardours burn.
To these adverse, the lunar sects dissent,
With convolution of opposed bent;
From west to east by equal influence tend,
And towards the moon's attractive crescence bend;
There, nightly worship with Sidonian zeal,
And queen of heaven Astarte's idol hail.

" O Nature , whom the song aspires to scan!
" O B EAUTY , trod by proud insulting man,
" This boasted tyrant of thy wondrous ball,
" This mighty, haughty, little lord of all;
" This king o'er reason, but this slave to sense,
" Of wisdom careless, but of whim immense;
" Towards T HEE ! incurious, ignorant, profane,
" But of his own, dear, strange, productions vain!
" Then, with this champion let the field be fought,
" And nature's simplest arts 'gainst human wisdom brought:
" Let elegance and bounty here unite —
" There kings beneficent, and courts polite;
" Here nature's wealth — there chymist's golden dreams;
" Her texture here — and there the statesman's schemes;
" Conspicuous here let Sacred Truth appear —
" The courtier's word, and lordling's honour there;
" Here native sweets in boon profusion flow —
" There smells that scented nothing of a beau;
" Let justice here unequal combat wage —
" Nor poise the judgment of the law-learn'd sage;
" Tho' all-proportion'd with exactest skill,
" Yet gay as woman's wish, and various as her will. "

O say, ye pitied, envied, wretched great,
Who veil pernicion with the mask of state!
Whence are those domes that reach the mocking skies,
And vainly emulous of nature rise?
Behold the swain projected o'er the vale!
See slumbering peace his rural eyelids seal;
Earth's flowery lap supports his vacant head;
Beneath his limbs her broider'd garment's spread;
Aloft her elegant pavilion bends,
And living shade of vegetation lends,
With ever propagated bounty blest,
And hospitably spread for every guest:
No tinsel here adorns a taudry woof,
Nor lying wash besmears a varnish'd roof;
With native mode the vivid colours shine,
And heaven's own loom has wrought the weft divine,
Where art veils art; and beauties beauties close,
While central grace diffused throughout the system flows.
The fibres, matchless by expressive line,
Arachne's cable, or aetherial twine,
Continuous, with direct ascension rise,
And lift the trunk, to prop the neighbouring skies.
Collateral tubes with respiration play,
And winding in aerial mazes stray.
These as the woof, while warping, and athwart
The exterior cortical insertions dart
Transverse, with cone of equidistant rays,
Whose geometric form the F ORMING H AND displays.
Recluse, the interior sap and vapour dwells
In nice transparence of minutest cells;
From whence, thro' pores or transmigrating veins
Sublimed the liquid correspondence drains,
Their pithy mansions quit, the neighbouring chuse,
And subtile thro' the adjacent pouches ooze;
Refined, expansive, or regressive pass,
Transmitted thro' the horizontal mass;
Compress'd the lignous fibres now assail,
And entering thence the essential sap exhale;
Or lively with effusive vigour spring,
And form the circle of the annual ring,
The branch implicit of embowering trees,
And foliage whispering to the vernal breeze;
While Zephyr tuned, with gentle cadence blows,
And lull'd to rest consenting eyelids close.
Ah! how unlike those sad imperial beds,
Which care within the gorgeous prison spreads;
Where tedious nights are sunk in sleepless down,
And pillows vainly soft, to ease the thorny crown!

Nor blush thou rose, tho' bashful thy array,
Transplanted chaste within the raptured lay;
Thro' every bush, and warbled spray we sing,
And with the linnet gratulate the spring;
Sweep o'er the lawn, or revel on the plain,
Or gaze the florid, or the fragrant scene;

I stare at your eyes and gather;
I close mine and wait:

the soft, yet vapid
on my lips, slightly open.
Yours cupped on my overlip.

The charged air, the sublimed space.

I close mine on yours,
and stay.
The comfort of overwhelmed.
We stay, please.

I push.

The warmth
of your every breath on
my philtrum:
you are with me, now;

I feel my bridge on yours
point it
and rest
on the vast, skin beside.
(carry me)

I run my thumb
on the smooth of your jaw,
the tender and sweet in
them lips
your delicate beauty.

Yes, dear:
I drown myself tonight
in your mouth.
We glow
in our little corner of the dark,
and starless sky.

Your brow loll on my forehead
your eyes gently unshut
looking
beyond the locked lips,
and the caressing chins,
on us.

Because.

My love,
more to tomorrow
and growing surround,
the ephemera of the night:

our lips,
inevitably,
will part.

Dripping water from faucet of heaven
pierced down the sky of my realm.
Last dream.
The sound went tip tip for two seconds and rimose creeped on my poise.
A fakir without head told me on my abrupt attention
"Find the sun,my son."

Old ragged converse from the stinky corners slipped out and hesitantly told
"You can't walk with me. You selfish rant"

The path was smooth to bore the hell out of me
From dawn to dusk I was among the rainfall of misty fumes
Slowly I vapoured too.I was informed
By voice unsung
"The sun shines only behind the clouds"
The dripping memories from faucet of heaven creaked inside me
I sublimed in absence of myself and words came out "what for?"

The  yellow ball of hot moraine bulbed out. The sun- it said, "What for"

The fakir without head spoke " the night is done"

In the soothing silence
Of the zealous nighttime
Losing all senses
To the seizure of lips sublimed

Raging as we were
Wondering how it would be
Spreading magic with ease
With a  bare luscious kiss

Drenched in the ocean
Of endless desires
The look in your eyes
Puts me on fire

How can I miss?
It’s my ultimate wish
Pleasant touch of bliss
A midnight kiss

Compelled in the serenity
Of the touch together
Let this midnight kiss
Release our souls forever

Broken loose and freed from a tiring hand
One who, in restful dark, withheld just that,
And left me to wander
To trace forms in the dark
Where troubles and trifles and plain existence
Creep and whisper their damning allure.
How prone am I, at this fatal hour,
To marching idlely backwards through
A blackened torpor
And letting exhausted candles
The haunts that hold, illume the endless halls
That each corner and door
Some revealed appalls.
Drown their debauch which sensually fawn
Out in the words of Byron’s Don Juan
And still feel their tempts, by some form of folly,
That compel me to a world of licentious melancholy.
Looking back to my bed, growing all the number
Cursing the forces which denied me my slumber
And what I saw in rich, encroaching beryl
Reconciled the dreams bereft of me:
An air of such fancy, a more permanent scene.
A smell like the snow to the darkness betrothed
Harkened me hence to a frosted window pane
And out it I saw an occasion so mundane
But at his hour, this light, the glittering flakes effervesce,
I thought I a soul gone from this place
And sublimed to a world
Which cannot harbor, nor ever know, hate.
The sky was so pale which, blithe did it shed,
So many crystalline wonders falling from space
And resting with ease and settling right into place
At that I saw the immaculate ground
Uniform, sanctified, untrodden upon,
With such power as to ward away any notions of destiny,
And purgation of all that could darken the mood.
Each lambent flake a seed sprouted
‘till the lawn was full of snowy trees,
The boughs which bloomed like a placid freeze
Themselves wearing white and all encrusted with ice
Like holy men inept to the notion of vice,
Reached high to the Heaven,
That which I doubt,
To catch alms on their fingers and Gloria shout.
Miles off I hear permeating through the calm
Respire as I arrest,
Synchronized, with time, the lungs of the world
Until my being, minutiae, was that of the whole
And the heart of beauty, a natural heart,
Beat, my confederate,
In league with my own.
In the colors of preternature, picturesque they played
That even in my worst of lows,
My heart at that placed stayed.
The azure raiment bleached at the wakened hour
And my eyes could not help but look away
Blinded by some intense light
In darkness they reflect on the previous sight
And rapture still comes in recollection
How dull were the visions before me lain
Their memorial no substitute, all artifice and plain
Petty entreaties, my pinings for that place again
Though destruction of halcyon I durst not entertain.
Even in depression, it wiles ******
And at times is seizure upon me lengthy, despotic
I’ve something, a snapshot, a little dab of paint
Which even my horrors cannot fully taint
I’ll think back, I’ll go back to that very place
Which I did not wholly leave:
A place of pure bliss
Where I cannot grieve.

What life does
A butterfly see
Pretty black
Fleeting eyes

Butterfly vision
Unquenched love
For flower's colored vista
Though I expect

They often think
They are solely
Living a short life
Only eating and pooping

Defined as
Caterpillar forever
Or, does their mind
Metamorph also

Now, it's little brain
Like the angel's
Holds thought to fly
Released to drift free

Astonished to rise
Chasing flower's nectar
Until too dark to see
Or bloom unrevealed

Anyway, as it is
Seen by you and me
A soaring glory
Of handiwork divine

Absolutely
A life sublimed

©  2017 Jim Davis

.

Steel rimmed spectacles
The fog is going to **** me
Brakes fail
Endless thoughts
A cut
So deep that my fear sublimed
drenched in sorrow
halcyon as ever
A myriad of mistakes
I have to compromise
because of my repugnant taste
I have to slaughter
my cashmere and its owner.

He walks for me now, out in the street, under the bough.
Definity; the feeling it, I know how.
Leave us, there is only one thing left for me now.
I miss . . . .

Whatever happened
to that quality, the character of life
that enticed me so?

Surreality broke my mind,
Ethereality left it behind,
Apotheosis deified,
Entheos sublimed.
The Empathion felt,
The Psychedelion knew,
Everything I did, I thought was true.

Maybe it is, according to point of view.
Take me with you.

I'm lost, alone, in a forest, in a room.
In this perfect darkness I can see you.
Here I feel true. Hold my hand
and let us renew.
Leave this plane of existence with me
and together we will surpass humanity.
Let us transcend the mind,
We will warp time
and alter the divine;
Together we will sublime.
Ethereality is what I've been searching for.

Desperately nervous
When grasping the coherence
Of the wisdom eye

I feel a small presence
Revealing endeavors
Of a cautioned mind

After a long night
Repetition and circulation
Memories sublimed.

I listened to your voice your change
Intense and mysterious
Sad and strange

Evocation of the choice
Sometimes these words possess
The power to destroy

I walk by the moon
Writing a threnody
Of the ubiquitous sublimed anger
Of the unkempt souls
My words are passing on
From one line to another
These phases are scattered
Like dandelion seeds
The zephyr diverting my attention
A pleasantly small plethora of emotions
Over flowing
With the tide
My mind ebbing to drown away
Like a sycophant
Unconsciously corrupted.

A glass of sun,
The circumference of the world,
the entire infinity.

The deep brown,
Warm umber,
Quiver and smirk.

Between two chasms,
Dark like the space-deep,
Shattered like starlight
Leaping off shards
Of white glass
All singing stars
And glass shattered off-white.

The width of a circle,
A soul locked within
A perfect deep-
Within a glance pained
By sublimed, sustained silence.

The width of a circle,
A soul sealed within
A perfect deep-
Therein a soul stained by
Touch,
By memory,
By touch,
By memory.
The frames of a face.

A soul sealed within a perfect sleep.

Love of our times in prism tense
Transcending through space on disparate lands
Canned in white of flickering sight  
Split unto fractions in barren light

Bluer than blue invisible hue
Lesser tinge be warmed in view
Meadow canvas of stars unveil
Redder than red unspectral hue
Lesser tinge be passion due
Scorching dreams escape in lieu

When rain meets sunshine colors flee
Cascading shades send forth in glee
Beckoning rainbow arc unfurls
Emitting its glow on our pensive worlds
Immersed in splendor we relish
Sublimed in arc of love we cherish

Your ego is just an illusion.

pain; just let it pass by.

live by the moment

and savor your time.

critics walls your maze

so be it, seize, get by.

regrets could pull you off

momentum backfires;

just when you reached success,

you face your  bid of decline.

and when we give in to pleasure

reality check is sublimed.

Your ego is just an illusion

wake up establish your stable.

It's the years that will reveal.

truth's harsh, and is inevitable.

I knew William thru the best and worst of times
His life ran down like integers of prime
And so close to death did he fall
The Reaper’s fingers upon him scrawled

Messages in fine lines etched into his face
A strange expression that left no trace
Of his former disposition
His self-sublimed by this attrition

But William recovered
And around him something strange hovered
And the light in his eyes had a strange lumen
I feared William brought back something inhuman

For he had a fierceness that was not there before
A coldness that into his soul did bore
He was fearless beyond all comprehension
His eyes put the light of life in serious contention

So no man or beast would look upon him
And his countenance was dark and beyond grim
He glowed at night within a dim purple hue
He was terrible to look at in this view

For some reason William like to be with me
He said I looked different than others he could see
And his demeanor softened when I was near
And I could be with him then without fear

William used to like night walks
So the city streets at night we stalked
One night we came upon a bad man
Insignias and tattoos designated some clan

And he was beating this poor woman to death
And she was begging him on her last breath
So I told William to wait while I rushed to her aid
Unto her tormentor I tried to dissuade

I pulled him off of her with a mighty heave
He got up and said he’d **** me if I didn’t leave
I saw this flash of blinding purple light
William picked him up in flight

And held him by the neck pinned up against a building wall
And spoke to him in a litany of death in hollow tones that did call
To another place that summoned dark, shadowy phantoms
That he summoned by these unearthly anthems

The air became as cold as ice
Two dark shapes appeared in a trice
Semi-transparent and ethereal like some dark fog
Coiling and seething like some noxious smog

And I saw upon one a semblance of eyes
And inside them I saw the universe rotating alive
As I looked into this abyss to see
I felt it looking back at me

So William told the phantoms they could have this man
To show him their dark and shadowy land
The man was screaming and crying not to go
Forgotten that he had tried to **** a moment ago

The two phantoms held onto the man by both arms
Unable to break their unearthly charms
They ascended into an eerie red litten cloud
That swallowed them up in a shroud

Of red and silver fleece
And their fell upon us a feeling of peace
William said to me, “it’s like this every time”
Then William began to fade from view and sublime

He said to me, “I’ll be back tomorrow”
His voice was played in the key of sorrow
“For I have to reestablish the balance”
“For our universal imbalance”

“For someday you will see”
“What truly happened to me”
“There are things that want to come back through”
“From near-death to me and to you”

“Entities of good and things that are bad”
“Who pay no heed to visiting spirits forbad”
“To come back through within that host”
“And hover within like some old ghost”

“And to you David I see your blue Angel”
“He watches over you this Archangel”
“And you see things in a beautiful light”
“And all things natural and bright”

So I saw William the other day
And his countenance had changed from black to grey
And he seemed at peace I gathered from his parlance
Now that he had the universe back in balance

The dark entity within him had gone
No longer the dark messenger’s pawn
At times I feel the dark one’s pulling at me
And vanish again at the blue angel they see

So the riders are there waiting to accrue
Their spirit Dark or Bright I haven’t a clue
Which one you get depends upon you
Vengeance or wisdom decides their hue

And so dear reader I leave you with this
Spending your time staring into the abyss
With shameful intentions trying to see through
All the while the abyss is staring back at you

And unto you it may send something you really don’t want
An entity, sinister, and dark that haunts
You to the ends of time
In odd meter and chaotic rhyme

They are the Riders From the Other Side
Floating in a netherworld they glide
Desperately wanting back from whence they came
To try and finish their interruption in life’s game

Dave Proffitt
2/15/2014
11:42 pm

Half our bodies oxygen,
      by mass.
Transfermium Wars-  who knew?
      elemental naming controversy,
      my new favorite war.
Americium-241 in your smoke detector,
     alpha emitter, ionizing ****.
Dual atomic clocks- Ytterbium lattice-
     understanding would taint this fun.
     (Apparently there is a Time and Frequency
     Division somewhere).
Solid to vapor- if only we sublimed
     our way home, though maybe better
     suited for air signs. An earth sign, myself,
     sticking to terra dirtus.
2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126- the Magic
     Numbers in physics- full nuclei,
     like full bellies- maybe our magic years too...
     'cept for 126- unless you're a Galapagos tortoise.
Manganese blackening bulls in Lascaux.
Plumbum latin for lead, ala plumbers and their pipes
     of yesteryear.
Fire and brimestone actually fire and sulfur,
     still wrathful, though I always
     imagined brimstone as being a
     damning brick falling.

You won't be synthesized, maybe never discovered,
                yet we sense you near, proposed metal,
                silvery white and ghosting....
                              
                                      119.

The prime, sublimed
In the ambience
Of time

The seductive spectrum
Of rays, find its way,
To shine

The greens of the oak
The forest pines, bow
To their shrine

The creatures, the preachers
The four-legged, the two-legged
Teachers

Roam this dome
This earth, our world
We call it home...


©sim

Love lined
In 4/4s and 3/5ths    
Off tone but sublimed
Hunch right to see ya'
Like the leaning tower of Pizza
inclined to take ya out for pizza
Looking like a mona lisa look a alike
But they got you mistook
You're your own woman
The best alive in my book
The best in my life understood me
Never took me for granted
Instead she planted a seed in me
Watch me grow, grant wishes infinitely
Sowed love but never sold love, give that away for free  
Grow above the traumas facing me
We can grow above the traumas
Plain to see we can grow above
Whats pained us to be human
Its not all slayer and doom in
This world. Theres beauty in humanity. In you and me.
I can see the beauty in you
Hope youll be able to see whats plain
to see
The divine beauty within your deeds

I catch myself quoting poetry to be written
and I do I wonder, am I that crazy
are my religious endeavors all in vain
will I have Romans banging on my back door

I know art is my fix
I have nearly done them all
just not keen on pottery
or chipping at marble with tools

I am more of a cerebral man
made of music and rhythm
I write for the love for it
so not just for isms

Oh come my gentile folk
I don't do it for a dime
some of my babies
will one day be sublimed

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

I cried for joy
That wasn't mine
I found the tears
In love sublimed

Among the dancing daffodils
And there above in the milky way.
In all rhymes of Wordsworth
And in all of the Shakespeare's play.
"YOU" and "I" sublimed into us.

But deceptive blood-robed pomegranates
With their piteous decay, and sullen seeds
Packed as kids’ taut skins in sand-tinted crates;
With bloom, with ruin, and sweet as reeds
Them reeds naught know of plain parched mourn
As wails it and yields to their illiterate lips;
As stumbles then snakelike out— thin and worn.
Begotten unwanted, poorly fathomed, forgotten wisps
Of old, odourless leisured hours,
That scrubbed, so gruntled, and scratched the fruit.
Then white silks soft within parched blue days;
And no heirs birthed, sublimed the flowers.
Touch it; the crumple and crêpe is not yet soot
If it could bleed, it could bloom alive, ablaze.

Pull all the weeds away.
Rows of caravans- unwavering oceans
- cold, ****** tides; under and over
the wandering moons and the weeping stars
Grab by the necks and
pull the unwelcomed out-
this sacred dirt will have no more.
Pull out, like the sea did in-
Echoing, chocking, musical screams
Bloming, wilting, weightless beings

Once more yet once more!
Come! The hungry void will hold some more.
Once more then once more!
How many were not puked out on the shore-

Rugged beds stabbing the skins
pre-engraved with tales untold.
dripping canvas of bruised camps
Let the clouds bleed over; they stained our
streets with their spitting wounds.
Let the winds wash away, far from here.
Take them along, O draining sun!
These dirt-stained faces can't blend in ours
unborn shivering, tired in wombs-
newborn silent, still as windless skies.

Once more yet once more!
Come! The starving dirt will take more treats
Once more then once more!
How many were sublimed off on the streets-

Flocks of lambs, follow they, the burning sun
Broken glass- scattered shards- missing, lost
Snarling lions, waiting, in bushes- in bygone homes
Thirsty seas, desperate for survivors- forgotten shores
Tempted despair, devours and embraces the petite lives
Impatient death being impatient death ebbing them away.

Uninvited unbidden unaccepted unwanted-
embers roaming the vacant sky, searching home.

Pull all the weeds away
- this is not their home.