I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time’s covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

              If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

              If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

II

Ash on and old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
       This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
       This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the ****.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
       This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
     Near the ending of interminable night
     At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
     Had passed below the horizon of his homing
     While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
     Between three districts whence the smoke arose
     I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
     Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
     And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
     The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
     I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
     Both one and many; in the brown baked features
     The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
     So I assumed a double part, and cried
     And heard another’s voice cry: ‘What! are you here?’
Although we were not. I was still the same,
     Knowing myself yet being someone other—
     And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
     And so, compliant to the common wind,
     Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
     Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
     We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: ‘The wonder that I feel is easy,
     Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
     I may not comprehend, may not remember.’
And he: ‘I am not eager to rehearse
     My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
     These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
     By others, as I pray you to forgive
     Both bad and good. Last season’s fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
     For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
     And next year’s words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
     Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
     In streets I never thought I should revisit
     When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
     To purify the dialect of the tribe
     And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
     To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
     First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
     As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
     At human folly, and the laceration
     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
     Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
     Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
     Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.’
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
     He left me, with a kind of valediction,
     And faded on the blowing of the horn.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
     Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
     To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

In you, there must be empathy,
For my madness, I've become.
No other names to call me by,
I am Mr. Numb.
The pain of the daily tastelessness,
Seems to lose itself in obscurity.
In the abstraction of shape and form,
I care to question me.

In you there must be hope,
For my mirror, you've become.
You will be my clarity,
I will not be numb.
The moment that we met,
Was ingrained within my mind,
But as the hours turned to days,
In the darkness, I now find...

Abstractions, you and tastelessness,
I'm found, obscured in loss.
My mind is the universe you reside within,
And emotion remains the boss,
As hours, weeks and years pass,
A moment becomes them all.
In the way a seed becomes a tree,
As we watch it slowly fall.

Dedication:

Nectare bred of an artist's haught testament—
        brings only stunted buds of tastelessness.
Be it naught for the height in numerous tidal of Muse—
        to cause the strike of warmth in bruise.

Upon the cheeks shadow'd in might—
        strength of amour upon near-sight.
You!—Blossom, are of a frightful power—
        to journey nestled mind of dark tower.

As though a hawk perched higher than the peak—
        of mountainous and controlling streaks,
Colourblind by potent affair lost—
        by centuries of sicken'd fever crossed.

By and by another name, honeyed pursuit—
        yearning that cause a poet becoming mute.
Meagerly, he instead scribes his burning allegory—
        that shall cause a life—eternal fragmentary.


Dangers of Kimberleigh

“Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.”
― Louisa May Alcott, "Little Women"

I.

When the morning demands you and I—
        our ghosts shall pass empty resides,
Against fields where lines opposing light, force and bind—
        of Angel's breath and Dæmon's spine.

Of shrieks louder than their first meeting's kiss—
        residing now—perfection upon midnight's bliss,
Abiding near the tender gardens upon the blinding dark—
        creating haste of love-song made by grave Skylark.

Who in joyous play—should cause collapse—
        towards serene, augmented lapse.
Lapse of falling, of where gentle screams—
        of every child that's ever been,

Who stroke themselves against empty glass—
        and where visions pray upon the grasp,
Of wind—Of blinding—Of melody—
        to hold faint—Immortality.


II.

This shall be where morning seeks—
        no longer calming of beauty's cheek.
Instead to lash with vain and hostile mount—
        crimson over dashed and harsh doubt.

Until image engraved by forgiving rite—
        speaking neglect of fiend or fiendish blight.
In-versed—coole angelic heart to passéd—
        passage beside Lilac's memory in mortal castéd.

In the unwashed Earth, where the unwashed play—
        'till they unfairly capture it from younglings— Away.
Lonesomeness of watchtowers in gossamer's breast—
        when airy words strangled from bless.
  
Reachéd by the hand—abide in fable—
        quiet tho—in fruitation, a single silver Maple.
Shyly envisioned inside salvation's solitude—
        where tenderness drowns tenderéd concludes.


III.

The sister was lovely—inside my sight—
        in our union—created Nature's first night.
Through our throats rendered fragile lullaby—
        which slaughtered silence and made soldiers cry.

Her bristles—exploit in darkness—I could not see—
        or merely recollect in memory.
A mouth moving inside of mine—
        creatures in mawkery of untouched divine.

Eyes whom beatéd harder than the breeze—
        to remind me—gently of the ease.
Of being caught in cognitive stance.
        which leaves surrender to in traditional, disciplined dance.

Upon the backs of universal forestry—
        and inside their stomachs to where we would meet.
Offended to death by requiem—
        made inside our faint dream's drum.


IV.

Where dreamer's would lash upon in endless screams—
        innumerable Rubies ruin'd before their first gleam.
Upon reflection in lover's loss—
        diminished to demise before their first gloss.

It is upon the fool's finest end—
        where lies his fantasy—condemned.
The jester who remains as undefeat—
        before death shall cause lackluster's retreat.

Unaware tho, in current mode—
        as body by body closely will hold.
And messages of Gold conspire in streaks—
        immersed—affection in mind eternally correlates oblique.

Ringing and humming throughout what laid—
        against blonde grass from Sin was made.
Refraction's cast that betrayed—to promise me—
        endless nights of haunting harmonies.


V.

Held tightly in grieving bourne—
        broken—in new blood is sworn.
Across the snow-cover'd Evergreens—
        where the temptress grave is left unseen.

Not upon her kiss—did darkness fall—
        alone—in shining pieces did crawl,
Against creator—and thus creator hence—
        bitter loving shrouded by bare defense.

As her finite skin had laid eternal flesh—
        of what laid inside Pine's parting mesh.
Holding and crying out for uncertainty—
       feelings moaned into sudden Mercenaries.

Morose and fledgling in their stand—
        spiritéd to Death's light misunderstand,
Of peerless eyes and broken brooks by the sea—
        casting ruined cloth over our Evergreens.


VI.

Unfurnished dawn may scour for length of furnished night—
        quick—until mirroréd ebbed ocean does wrong.
To consume the idles of Man's afraid mind—
        fairest—lest His idles struck into divine.

Exclaiméd none tho, in archaic lust—
        deceased—firmest in high robust.
Where pleasure finds comforted pause—
        inside arched-back in neglected cause.

Betray the shallow grimace flee—
        and ethereal composed by the breeze.
Lies delicate delusion before sorrow—
        that shall thieve away the Artist's morrow.

And in thievery is where the Angels lie—
        angelic beasts with unlawful guise,
In courts—castrated by the throat—
        hardened in assumption by blackened elope.

The cover band plays a tirade
of songs we all heard before.

They switch to originals;
which all sound the same.

Originality is as rare as a dollar in my pocket
and just as likely to be spent in tastelessness.

She wore her dinner loose - more of a greasy pub lunch.
******* harder than diamonds in the open winter heat.

Not hungry anymore.

Two soldiers
Who write together
Question life's
Serenities

Loving words
Is a craft
Of crazy wastefulness
And tastelessness

I forget at times
That the moon
Does but one job

And the flowers
Dewy, yellow, and ******
Lay there
Looking nifty

Laugh at the clothed mother
At the way she prances
And dances
At her own secret sorrows
She knows
But is unable to show

A word
Is a word
With one thousand meanings

Some are demeaning:
*******
**** my ****
Lick my duck
Your never enough

But whom do I truly talk to?
An illiterate
With already enough of the jive ****?

Or maybe
A stronghold of a woman
With a temper tantrum
Of an intellectual
But a face of suction

Grudges ain't never enough
For they share no sense
Of absolute solitude

To write
To be alone
To cry
And then die
And to then reach readers
Where ever they may be
Will ask,
Why?
Why?
Why?
Ha!
All who strive to feel
Love to be beaten

But they are the ones with the questions
And we are the ones with the answers?
Go to the monsters upstate
They've been signing all their papers
With ink blots and officially posted dates

A will less man
In a world un-renewed
Is a follower
In a loser's shoe

The humor flies right over heads,
Like leaves off trees much too overgrown.
Quick to shoot and stab in darkness,
Naked kitchen table manners,
Plastic flaccid people actors,
Vacant star shaped locket
Picture frames a blackmail recipient.
Forget your names for heavens sake.
Preface to my new face in tastelessness,
Fragrant little boomer baby.

I’ve chewed this gum to tastelessness
For I fail to find the words to describe
How wilting day-old roses make me feel
As I cringe to the sound of cuddling nearby
Among other intimacies…
I attempt to make it a testament to my strength
And regard those sounds as mindless background noise,
Not worth my time.
But if I give in to such thoughts,
Is that not already a sign of weakness?
And what now that I’ve accepted it?
Things won’t change.
I’ll have to keep pretending
That needles don’t hurt when they ***** my heart
In the same way he deals me piercing stares
And lulls me into daydreams with his voice.
It’s senseless of me to continue
I’m simply digging myself into a bigger whole of despair
As my fantasies grow more fantastic.
If only I could say the roses were from him…

Pulsing
Pulsing
All I'm doing is pulsing
A tight grip on loose air
A fickle taste of lips in the midst of a tragic interwoven memory despite their tastelessness and despite their grievance. Destroy them upon where they stand, and not because you want to but because they have to go. The shimmers of electric signals sending to your brain, seeing stars from a fall or dizziness from the spiral staircase which sends you to where you now seem to be. Desolate and a holiday and a slap and a curfew and a nap in the lake of humanity in the woods of lunacy in the dark of what we fail to see.

joy to my family
peace to my enemy
strength to myself
my wisdom and my health

unkindness is tastelessness
the only way i’ll face this is
my long-term relationships
with compassion and patience

The darkest hour is before dawn
The knees are weak
Like over ripe guavas hope falls
No rainbow in the eye of the storm
No glimpse of hope to derive courage from
High waves and tides as the seas foam

Calmness is a distant memory
If this is a love song
Why should it be so painful?
Cupid must be stupid!
A myth to be forgotten
The past belong to the past

I can smell the aroma of change!
The rays of a new dawn
A new era
New memories are about to knock at the door of your heart
Please do not despair
God never fails to repair

Take no pain from the past but lessons learnt
You are not a prisoner to hurting but a victor of forgiveness
Open your heart once again
Let the cool breeze of love fill you
The rain of care slowly but surely trickle
Dripping and drizzling like honey dew from the sweetest comb

Love is there hidden in the shadows of these roses so colourful believe me
Smell its refreshing scent and follow it to the wonderland
Love so luscious as the moon
Succulent as the night  
Romantic as a rose
Soothing like a summer rain

Free your mind and free your spirit
Lament no more!
Spit the tastelessness of this test
And turn it into a testimony
From a mess to a message of the future
Frame this shame into a parachute and have a safe landing!

You can be down but not out
Because love is never a race
Love is life and life is love
Always remember: the meaning to life is the pursuit of your heart
What I never did is done
Go ahead and fly your kite

Beyond the storm it will shine again
Because you are the one to paint the rain in the sky
So please don’t cry
The fish are yours to fry
You can choose to fly
And never forget to smile

If sadness had a taste
I imagine it would be plain
Heavy like cream
But tastelessness in flavor

It might taste like rejection
Shocking, maybe spicy at first
But then your tongue would go numb
And then you couldn’t taste anything

It might taste like grief
Salty as a widespread ocean
Burning as you swallow it
Clutching your stomach as it sloshes about

It might taste like anger
Sharp as a Fireball whiskey
One you’ve taken too many shots of
In your bouts of pointless, destructive rage

It might smell like your sheets
Comforting at first
But soon they become chains
Rather than the escape they were before

It might smell like sweat
Something that should be for exercise
But instead it’s because you haven’t showered
And the aroma just reminds you how incapable you are

It might smell like rotten food
Food you should have thrown a away days ago
But you’ve left it uneaten in your room, on ***** plates
Because you feel like you deserve the filth

It might look like a messy room
Not because you’re lazy
But because there’s no reason to keep it clean
No one visits anyway

It might look like ***** laundry
Piled in a corner
Things you haven’t washed yet, but why bother
You aren’t leaving the house anytime soon

It might look like a ***** car
Dusty and unused
You haven’t driven it in days
Because you can’t stand driving alone

Or... it might just look,
Smell
And taste like me
A stale saltine
Attempting to be something I’m not