In a quiet, pleasant meadow,
Beneath a summer sky,
Where green old trees their branches waved,
And winds went singing by;
Where a little brook went rippling
So musically low,
And passing clouds cast shadows
On the waving grass below;
Where low, sweet notes of brooding birds
Stole out on the fragrant air,
And golden sunlight shone undimmed
On all most fresh and fair;--
There bloomed a lovely sisterhood
Of happy little flowers,
Together in this pleasant home,
Through quiet summer hours.
No rude hand came to gather them,
No chilling winds to blight;
Warm sunbeams smiled on them by day,
And soft dews fell at night.
So here, along the brook-side,
Beneath the green old trees,
The flowers dwelt among their friends,
The sunbeams and the breeze.

One morning, as the flowers awoke,
Fragrant, and fresh, and fair,
A little worm came creeping by,
And begged a shelter there.
'Ah! pity and love me,' sighed the worm,
'I am lonely, poor, and weak;
A little spot for a resting-place,
Dear flowers, is all I seek.
I am not fair, and have dwelt unloved
By butterfly, bird, and bee.
They little knew that in this dark form
Lay the beauty they yet may see.
Then let me lie in the deep green moss,
And weave my little tomb,
And sleep my long, unbroken sleep
Till Spring's first flowers come.
Then will I come in a fairer dress,
And your gentle care repay
By the grateful love of the humble worm;
Kind flowers, O let me stay!'
But the wild rose showed her little thorns,
While her soft face glowed with pride;
The violet hid beneath the drooping ferns,
And the daisy turned aside.
Little Houstonia scornfully laughed,
As she danced on her slender stem;
While the cowslip bent to the rippling waves,
And whispered the tale to them.
A blue-eyed grass looked down on the worm,
As it silently turned away,
And cried, 'Thou wilt harm our delicate leaves,
And therefore thou canst not stay.'
Then a sweet, soft voice, called out from far,
'Come hither, poor worm, to me;
The sun lies warm in this quiet spot,
And I'll share my home with thee.'
The wondering flowers looked up to see
Who had offered the worm a home:
'T was a clover-blossom, whose fluttering leaves
Seemed beckoning him to come;
It dwelt in a sunny little nook,
Where cool winds rustled by,
And murmuring bees and butterflies came,
On the flower's breast to lie.
Down through the leaves the sunlight stole,
And seemed to linger there,
As if it loved to brighten the home
Of one so sweet and fair.
Its rosy face smiled kindly down,
As the friendless worm drew near;
And its low voice, softly whispering, said
'Poor thing, thou art welcome here;
Close at my side, in the soft green moss,
Thou wilt find a quiet bed,
Where thou canst softly sleep till Spring,
With my leaves above thee spread.
I pity and love thee, friendless worm,
Though thou art not graceful or fair;
For many a dark, unlovely form,
Hath a kind heart dwelling there;
No more o'er the green and pleasant earth,
Lonely and poor, shalt thou roam,
For a loving friend hast thou found in me,
And rest in my little home.'
Then, deep in its quiet mossy bed,
Sheltered from sun and shower,
The grateful worm spun its winter tomb,
In the shadow of the flower.
And Clover guarded well its rest,
Till Autumn's leaves were sere,
Till all her sister flowers were gone,
And her winter sleep drew near.
Then her withered leaves were softly spread
O'er the sleeping worm below,
Ere the faithful little flower lay
Beneath the winter snow.

Spring came again, and the flowers rose
From their quiet winter graves,
And gayly danced on their slender stems,
And sang with the rippling waves.
Softly the warm winds kissed their cheeks;
Brightly the sunbeams fell,
As, one by one, they came again
In their summer homes to dwell.
And little Clover bloomed once more,
Rosy, and sweet, and fair,
And patiently watched by the mossy bed,
For the worm still slumbered there.
Then her sister flowers scornfully cried,
As they waved in the summer air,
'The ugly worm was friendless and poor;
Little Clover, why shouldst thou care?
Then watch no more, nor dwell alone,
Away from thy sister flowers;
Come, dance and feast, and spend with us
These pleasant summer hours.
We pity thee, foolish little flower,
To trust what the false worm said;
He will not come in a fairer dress,
For he lies in the green moss dead.'
But little Clover still watched on,
Alone in her sunny home;
She did not doubt the poor worm's truth,
And trusted he would come.

At last the small cell opened wide,
And a glittering butterfly,
From out the moss, on golden wings,
Soared up to the sunny sky.
Then the wondering flowers cried aloud,
'Clover, thy watch was vain;
He only sought a shelter here,
And never will come again.'
And the unkind flowers danced for joy,
When they saw him thus depart;
For the love of a beautiful butterfly
Is dear to a flower's heart.
They feared he would stay in Clover's home,
And her tender care repay;
So they danced for joy, when at last he rose
And silently flew away.
Then little Clover bowed her head,
While her soft tears fell like dew;
For her gentle heart was grieved, to find
That her sisters' words were true,
And the insect she had watched so long
When helpless, poor, and lone,
Thankless for all her faithful care,
On his golden wings had flown.
But as she drooped, in silent grief,
She heard little Daisy cry,
'O sisters, look! I see him now,
Afar in the sunny sky;
He is floating back from Cloud-Land now,
Borne by the fragrant air.
Spread wide your leaves, that he may choose
The flower he deems most fair.'
Then the wild rose glowed with a deeper blush,
As she proudly waved on her stem;
The Cowslip bent to the clear blue waves,
And made her mirror of them.
Little Houstonia merrily danced,
And spread her white leaves wide;
While Daisy whispered her joy and hope,
As she stood by her gay friends' side.
Violet peeped from the tall green ferns,
And lifted her soft blue eye
To watch the glittering form, that shone
Afar in the summer sky.
They thought no more of the ugly worm,
Who once had wakened their scorn;
But looked and longed for the butterfly now,
As the soft wind bore him on.

Nearer and nearer the bright form came,
And fairer the blossoms grew;
Each welcomed him, in her sweetest tones;
Each offered her honey and dew.
But in vain did they beckon, and smile, and call,
And wider their leaves unclose;
The glittering form still floated on,
By Violet, Daisy, and Rose.
Lightly it flew to the pleasant home
Of the flower most truly fair,
On Clover's breast he softly lit,
And folded his bright wings there.
'Dear flower,' the butterfly whispered low,
'Long hast thou waited for me;
Now I am come, and my grateful love
Shall brighten thy home for thee;
Thou hast loved and cared for me, when alone,
Hast watched o'er me long and well;
And now will I strive to show the thanks
The poor worm could not tell.
Sunbeam and breeze shall come to thee,
And the coolest dews that fall;
Whate'er a flower can wish is thine,
For thou art worthy all.
And the home thou shared with the friendless worm
The butterfly's home shall be;
And thou shalt find, dear, faithful flower,
A loving friend in me.'
Then, through the long, bright summer hours
Through sunshine and through shower,
Together in their happy home
Dwelt butterfly and flower.

Recruitment is an utterly thankless job
Especially if you are handling an Investment Banking role
That too when working in a startup
You spend hours and hours
Searching frantically for candidates
Who possess the requisite skills and experience
Followed by days and days
Speaking to a plethora of candidates
Facing rejection after rejection
Watching your own confidence nosedive
After almost every conversation
And then gritting your teeth and continuing to burn the midnight oil
After you finally manage to share a few relevant resumes
By the skin of your teeth
You breathe a sigh of relief
Knowing that your job is half done
Everything runs smoothly from thereon
Till the offer stage
When the candidate decides to back out
Having received a better offer elsewhere
And you are back to square one
However, you resume the search
With a renewed vigour
And put your heart and soul
Into finding a suitable replacement
Your efforts are duly rewarded
However, misfortune strikes again
The candidate develops cold feet
And gets retained by his present company
You have to go back to the drawing board, yet again
However, you refuse to give up
And work harder than ever
Determined to be third time lucky
Alas! Fate turns its back on you, yet again
The client proves to be a tad too miserly
Thus pushing your candidate away
However, you continue to resist bravely
Against all odds
Determined to prove a point
More to yourself, than anyone else
However, history repeats itself
For the fourth time in a row
And you are left bruised and battered
In the face of a year full of bad luck
Which has brought you a record seven backouts
And all you can do now
Is to pray, and keep praying
For 2022 to end as soon as possible
Recruitment, is indeed an utterly thankless job

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not **** him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would **** him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how ******, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

He slumped onto the barbedwire
thinking of the end in no man's land
his uniform grey with ash
his army colours now blind to all

From out of a trench he had dashed
but dying no hero by the call of a whistle
just a name in a thankless world war
that in a thousand more years
will have tragically so many tears

No Poppy will grow here
whilst the bombs and gunfire go on
this land will not settle
with killing machines of metal

So he is dying with his blood and pride
yet not in a land for butterflies
he looks at his loves stained photograph
in his last breath gasps, Poppy my Poppy

By Christis Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

It is not the sun that lights my path.
It never will and never has.
And as age slowly cripples me
I realize, without the sun I'll ever be.

In this time of plastic body parts,
A culture with no concept of art,
Lit by the fake and fluorescent suns,
Where the only language heard comes from the mouth
                                                    ­                               of a gun

I am not alone in this dark and natural dankness.
We are children who grow|and are thankless.
We cannot even dream of open spaces.
The television reflects a bleak reality on our faces.

It's a time of war|the enemy is everyone.
Time has stopped in this world void of sun.
All that's left is the intent to ****.
And our only way out is to simply stand still.

You were wailing like a wounded puppy
Your voice was craving for love and sympathy
It appealed to my dormant magnanimity
And thus for you I opened my heart’s door
Least did I know you were an ugly *****.

I stood beside you at your one call
Your tantrums, your malice I bore ‘em all.
To make you smile daily became my life’s goal
But you were so thankless it shook me to the core
I should have known earlier, you were an ugly *****

Though my knowledge about love was low
Yet at times I wondered if you really know
so much definitions of it and the metaphors bestowed
then why did your breakup happen once before
perhaps because he too knew, you were an ugly *****

What I thought was your love with glee
Was actually an act of backstabbing me.
You betrayed in the first chance given to thee
Now I shall give you chances no more
Because now I know that you are an ugly *****.

What truths
will you
set free
before you
are set free.
Do you
think you
could actually
discern and
figure this out.
That we
have no
forever because
our heart
will meet
next to never.
I have
fought vehemently
to become
the emissary
of truth
all my life.
It’s a
burden and
a curse
that i
wish no man.
It's a
thankless errand
for only
the called.
The road
within that
leads to
a lonely path.
A road
less travelled.
But what
really is the
actual truth.
Truth it
seems eludes man,
for the
mind of
man is
weak and
not made
up and not
so good.
Even though
the consciousness
of the
mind of
man cannot
be deceived
for man
is born
in soul goodness.
Some of
the acts
of man
are a
disappointment
and disheartening.
And man
at the
final stage
will find
out that
he is
an exulted
and an
enlightened being.
©2019,Emeka Mokeme. All Rights Reserved.

I've given poetry readings where less than a handful of people were present. It's a humbling experience. It’s also a deeply familiar experience.

"Poetry is useless," poet Geoffrey ****** said in a 2013 interview, "but it is useless the way the soul is useless—it is unnecessary, but we would not be what we are without it."

I was raised a Roman Catholic, and though I don’t go to Mass regularly anymore, I still remember early mornings during Advent when I went to liturgies at my parochial school. It was part of my offering—the sacrifice I made to honor the impending birth of the Savior—along with giving up candy at Lent. So few people attended at that hour that the priest turned on only a few lights near the altar. Approaching the front of the church, my plastic book bag rustling against my winter coat, I felt as if I were nearing the seashore at sunrise: the silhouettes of old widows on their kneelers at low tide, waiting for the priest to come in, starting the ritual in plain, unsung vernacular. No organist to blast us into reverence. No procession.

Every day, all over the world, these sparsely attended ceremonies still happen. Masses are said. Poetry is read. Poems are written on screens and scraps of paper. When I retire for the day, I move into a meditative, solitary, poetic space. These are the central filaments burning through my life, and the longer I live, the more they seem to be fused together.

Poetry is marginal, thankless, untethered from fame and fortune; it's also gut level, urgent, private yet yearning for connection. In all these ways, it's like prayer for me. I’m a not-quite-lapsed Catholic with Zen leanings, but I’ll always pray—and I’ll always write poems. Writing hasn’t brought me the Poetry Jackpot I once pursued, but it draws on the same inner wiring that flickers when I pray.        

• • •

In the 2012 collection A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith, nineteen contemporary American poets, from Buddhist to Wiccan to Christian, discuss how their artistic and spiritual lives inform one another. Kazim Ali, who was raised a Shia Muslim, observes in his essay “Doubt and Seeking”:

[Prayer is] speaking to someone you know is not going to be able to speak back, so you're allowed to be the most honest that you can be. In prayer you're allowed to be as purely selfish as you like. You can ask for something completely irrational. I have written that prayer is a form of panic, because in prayer you don't really think you're going to be answered. You'll either get what you want or you won't.

You could replace the word "prayer" with "poetry" with little or no loss of meaning. I'd even go so far as to say that submitting my work to a journal often feels like this, too. Sometimes, when I get an answer in the form of an acceptance, I'm stunned.

"I never think of a possible God reading my poems, although the gods used to love the arts,” writes ***** Howe in her essay "Footsteps over Ground." She adds:

Poetry could be spoken into a well, of course, and drop like a penny into the black water. Sometimes I think that there is a heaven for poems and novels and music and dance and paintings, but they might only be hard-worked sparks off a great mill, which may add up to a whole-cloth in the infinite.

And here, you could easily replace the word "poetry" with "prayer." The penny falling to the bottom of a well is more often what we experience. But both poetry and prayer are things humans have learned to do in order to go on. Doubt is a given, but we do get to choose what it is we doubt.

A God in the House Book Cover
Quite a few authors in A God in the House (Howe, Gerald Stern, Jane Hirschfield, Christian Wiman) invoke the spiritual writing of Simone Weil, including her assertion that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." This sounds like the Zen concept of mindfulness. And it broadens the possibility for poetry as prayer, regardless of content, since writing poetry is an act of acute mindfulness. We mostly use words in the practical world to persuade or communicate, but prayers in various religious traditions can be lamentations of great sorrow. Help me, save me, take this pain away—I am in agony. In a church or a temple or a mosque, such prayerful lamentation is viewed as a form of expression for its own good, even when it doesn't lead immediately to a change of emotional state.

Perhaps the unmixed attention Weil wrote of is a unity of intention and utterance that’s far too rare in our own lives. We seldom match what we think or feel with what we actually say. When it happens spontaneously in poetry or prayer—Allen Ginsberg's "First thought, best thought" ideal —it feels like a miracle, as do all the moments when I manage to get out of my own way as a poet.

Many people who pray don’t envision a clear image of whom or what they’re praying to. But poets often have some sense of their potential readers. There are authorities whose approval I've tried to win or simply people I've tried to please: teachers, fellow writers, editors, contest judges—even my uncle, who actually reads my poems when they appear in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he used to work.

And yet, my most immersed writing is not done with those real faces in mind. I write to the same general entity to which I pray. It's as if the dome of my skull extends to the ceiling of the room I'm in, then to the dome of the sky and outward. It’s like the musings I had as a child lying awake at night, when my imagination took me to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But then I emerge from this wide-open state and begin thinking about possible readers—and the faces appear.

This might also be where the magic ends.

• • •

I write poetry because it’s what I do, just as frogs croak and mathematicians ponder numbers. Poetry draws on something in me that has persisted over time, even as I’ve distracted myself with other goals, demands, and purposes; even as I’ve been forced by circumstance to strip writing poetry of certain expectations.

"Life on a Lily Pad" © Michelle Tribe
"Life on a Lily Pad"
© Michelle Tribe
At 21, I was sure I’d publish my first book before I was 25. I’m past my forties now and have yet to find a publisher for a book-length collection, though I've published more than a hundred individual poems and two chapbooks. So, if a “real” book is the equivalent of receiving indisputable evidence that your prayers are being answered, I’m still waiting.

It hasn’t been easy to shed the bitter urgency I’ve felt on learning that one of my manuscripts was a finalist in this or that contest, but was not the winner. Writing in order to attain external success can be as tainted and brittle as saying a prayer that, in truth, is more like a command: (Please), God, let me get through this difficulty (or else)—

Or else what? It’s a false threat, if there’s little else left to do but pray. When my partner is in the ICU, his lungs full of fluid backed up from a defective aortic valve; when my nephew is deployed to Afghanistan; when an ex is drowning in his addiction; when I hit a dead end in my job and don’t think I can do it one more day—every effort to imagine that these things might be gotten through is a kind of prayer that helps me weather a life over which I have little control.

Repeated disappointment in my quest to hit the Poetry Jackpot has taught me to recast the jackpot in the lowercase—locating it not in the outcome but in the act of writing itself, sorting out the healthy from the unhealthy intentions for doing it. Of course, this shift in perspective was not as neat as the preceding sentence makes it seem. There were years of thrashing about, of turning over stones and even throwing them, then moments of exhaustion when I just barely heard the message from within:

This is too fragile and fraught to be something that guides your whole life.

I didn't hear those words, exactly—and this is important. For decades, I’ve made my living as a writer. But I can't manipulate or edit total gut realizations. I can throw words at them, but it would be like shaking a water bottle at a forest fire; at best, I can chase the feeling with metaphors: It's like this—no, like this—or like this.

So, odd as this sounds for a poet, I now seek wordlessness. When I meditate, I intercept hundreds of times the impulse to shape a perception into words. Reduced to basics, the challenge facing any writer is knowing what to say—and what not to.

• • •

To read or listen to poetry requires unmixed attention just as writing it does. And when a poem is read aloud, there's a communal, at times ritualistic, element that can make a reading feel like collective prayer, even if there are only a few listeners in the audience or I’m listening by myself.

"Allen Ginsberg" © MDCArchives
Allen Ginsberg
© MDCArchives
When I want to feel moved and enlarged, all I have to do is play Patti Smith's rendition of Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl." His long list poem from 1955 gathers people, places, objects, and abstractions onto a single exuberant altar. It’s certainly a prayer, one that opens this way:

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and **** and hand and ******* holy!

Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!

Some parts of Ginsberg's list ("forgiveness! charity! faith! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!") belong in any conventional catalogue of what a prayer celebrates as sacred. Other profane elements ("the ***** of the grandfathers of Kansas!") gain admission because they are swept up into his ritualistic roll call.

I can easily parody Ginsberg's litany: Holy the Dairy Queen, holy the barns of the Amish where cheese is releasing its ambitious stench, holy the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Internet. But reading the poem aloud feels to me the way putting on ritual garments must to a shaman or rabbi or priest. Watching Patti Smith perform the poem (various versions are available on YouTube), I get shivers seeing how it transforms her, and it's clear why she titled her treatment of the poem "Spell."

A parody can't do that. It can't manifest as the palpable unity of intention and utterance. It can't do what Emily Dickinson famously said that poetry did to her:

If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only [ways] I know it. Is there any other way.

Like the process of prayer—to God, to a better and bigger self, to the atmosphere—writing can be a step toward unifying heart, mind, body, universe. Ginsberg's frenzied catalogue ends on "brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul"; Eliot's The Waste Land on "shantih," or "the peace that surpasseth understanding." Neither bang nor whimper, endings like these are at once humble and tenacious. They say "Amen" and step aside so that a greater wordlessness can work its magic.

Again the time has come for all to gather round the fire,
"That time again", we say, while we assess the money drained,
The looks of disappointment from the ***** with stupid attire,
And truth will leak from drink fuelled mouths, with need to be restrained.


Your mum is singing drunkenly, while flirting with the vicar,
And dad is out the back sneaking a joint with cousin victor,
The dog is ******* aunt Jemima's artificial leg,
And someone just had a turkey ****,the kind that makes you sicker.

The christmas lights have fused again, so grandad's on the roof,
Sheer will power keeps him up there,and of course, martini vermouth,
Grandma's lost her teeth,and someone screams near the eggnog,
They're sent flying across the room and land in the fire on a log,

You feel your patience slipping as the pandamoniem mounts,
With thankless moans of "Oh well, its the ****** thought that counts",
And not forgetting Glenn, invited by your mum, but why?
So you and he can marry, and honeymoon in Hawaii.

With no idea that Glenn is gay, i guess the joke's on her,
I mean, what straight guy wears his y fronts entirely made from fur??
The night draws to a close,as bitter, crying family leave,
And relief is all too short, as there's still new years eve!!!

This poem is dedicated to the fallen of the First World War, and also, to all those we have lost in the years since.

- Somme Harvest -

In the early morning
Dawn of the fiery horizon,
The sea of green caresses the land
And gave it gentle kisses
Of tender sadness.

On this day many an unlived life would find
Life in Death, but first must come Death in Life,
Indeed, a bouquet of barbs grace the
Dark, dank, *****
Halls of Morningstar,
Servants go to and fro preparing the sordid feast
Of unsung heroes.

Babes in arms are they, who shall
Ever sleep till the break of the final day.

Fields of Flanders infertile,
But for the harvest to ripen
The fertilizer of life is
Scattered, battered, tattered,
Sown,
Human manure, nutrient of vitality,
It seeps into earthly soil.

In the year of our Lord,
One thousand, nine hundred and sixteen
Did the farmers collect their greatest bounty,
Not all farmers reaped massive yields,
Farmers Kultur, Sickle and Hammer
Fed their maniacal hunger with rotting corpses,
While famers Lion, Bulldog and Bald Eagle
Wept their hunger with mechanical eyes,
Farmer Scythe, steward of Morningstar,
Laughed dry, dead tears of hungry joy
And sang the golden harvest song
As his blade swam through the harvest thirstily,
For indeed, the harvest was an endless
Smoky sea of blood green
And thousands were sailing.

Twilight gleaming through the sky,
The raging war god *****’s dry thunderous wrath
And wreaks barbaric, savage, ferocious, ****** carnage below,
As sleeping
Babes in arms fly through the red twilight.

Vultures dressed in human feathers
Gather and crowd around their congealing cold feast,
With hatred sewn on their
Lifeless, lidless
Blind eyes,
They shriek their throaty, ******
Thankless prayers to idle gods.

A multitude of thousands upon thousands
Of souls sour to the heights of Mount Olympus,
Unshed tears,
My child, I saw you in that dusky evening half-light,
Flying, soaring and rising higher with your
Brothers-in-arms.

As I looked up at the darkening sky
My heart wept warm tears of ebbing love,
While my eyes forever dimmed the light,
And my baby,
My body became the Earth,

The phoenix has nested.

Hey Star Child, are you listening? Do you know?
There is a woman who is seated at the edge of existence;
She sits at the blush of all creation
And in her deft hands, the fabric of time and upon it, she will sew
She will sew ever so lonely, the joyful memories of those of space
Such thankless work

Her skin is as dark as the unknowable void and her eyes as bright as celestial sparks
She wades her long, thick legs in the primordial ooze
From which all life grasped onto her endless scroll of the fabric of time which she marks
With all the spectrum of human knowledge and human emotion: humanity itself.
But for her deft craft; it is thankless work

And she has name; a name of decency and order
Cosima of the Cosmos: divine being of all with tranquil auras upon her lips
Her soul is that of chaos and order; blooming with gentle petals that did corder
The interconnectedness of the realms and worlds at her fingertips
With deft fingers, she sews and she sews and she sews
Unaware time has passed at all; her endless chore without beginning where she goes

Without end, without thanks
Cosima sews. That is the true nature of her celestial,
Of her ethereal
Duty to us, the children of the stars whom she is unaware of; hark
Tis us who are unaware of her
She who sits, sewing, at the gorgeous turmoil of the beginning and end of the universe
That she has crafted, blissfully unaware of her how fingers bleed for us
She sits, sewing, and crafting the fabric of time rolled out infinitely upon our Earth

Oh Cosima, oh darling Cosima of the Cosmos, do you know?
Are you listening to I?
I who wish to bid you praise for your stellar talents
I who cry out in the astral abyss; completely separated from you by space and time
I who cry out in a weak, perishing voice
I who wishes to acknowledge your tireless, endless work

The work Cosmia, oh Cosima my darling, who creates all the pleasures and misfortunes
Of the human experience we write, we sew, we who praise all your efforts
Unknowingly so
To which is met with more bitter, ignorant bliss
For you, Cosima of the Cosmos, do not realise you are not alone
You do not realise that your astral fingertips is more lives than you will ever know
How horrible it is, such thankless, beautiful work
Imbued with loneliness you will never fathom
For such loneliness is all you’ve ever known

The ordered universe: symmetry and entropy
Petals of magenta, unfurl and it does greet
The morning sun in joy and the evening moon in farewell,
A name by any other just as sweet
Cosmo, the one with the name of peace and order, Cosmo
The flower we have signified to mean such pleasantries
In the feminine name of the motherly woman who sits at the edge of nothingness
And all
We did name such a pretty petal pink
But does she know?
But do you know?

Hey Star Child, did you listen? Do you now know?
Hey Star Child, will you be the one to let her know?
Will you be the one to thank Cosima of the Cosmos?

He showed promise 
That's what they said
Never knocked out
Next in line for the big seat
He could take a hit and hit right back
Then the Depression hit hard
The money, the promise, gone in an instant
Injury after injury, loss after loss
He was beat up and beaten down
No more boxing
Third night in a row without dinner
Bills stacked up on the counter
Out of money, out of credit, out of milk
Power's shut off, kids are cold
Wife is tired and so is he
Working at the docks with a broken hand
When he's lucky
He comes home from a thankless day
Children gone, wife in tears
We couldn't keep them warm, she says
They were getting sick, so I sent them away
We couldn't even feed them, Jimmy
She cries and he can't handle it
So he leaves
He goes to an office, fills out a form, waits in line
A woman hands him money, but he can't look for the shame
He takes it anyway
He goes to his friends, his old bosses
Please, I just want my children back, he begs
He sacrifices all self respect, all dignity
What makes him a man, gone, for his children
They throw him some spare change
A true friend makes up the difference
His family back together, there is happiness
But, dear God, will he ever make it out of this hole
They come to him with a fight
A glimmer of hope: money
He fights, he wins, but he doesn't dream
At least he doesn't say
He says it was just one fight
But they come again with another matchup
He wins again 
And he doesn't stop winning
Until one day he's in that same spot
His shot at the big spot
And his opponent is mean,
A true killer of men
But he is stronger, tougher
He fights for the beat up, the broke down
He fights for those who have to beg
He fights for his family, for milk 
He fights for the very right to live and breathe
And he will not lose this fight
He will scratch, bite, claw his way
But he will not lose
And he doesn't 
And we won't
because losing isn't an option
because everything is riding on it
because suffering makes us stronger
because when life hits you hard, you don't fall down
You hit back

Written in April 1798, during the alarm of an invasion

A green and silent spot, amid the hills,
A small and silent dell! O’er stiller place
No singing skylark ever poised himself.
The hills are heathy, save that swelling *****,
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
All golden with the never-bloomless furze,
Which now blooms most profusely: but the dell,
Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax,
When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,
The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
Oh! ’tis a quiet spirit-healing nook!
Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he,
The humble man, who, in his youthful years,
Knew just so much of folly as had made

His early manhood more securely wise!
Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,
While from the singing lark (that sings unseen
The minstrelsy that solitude loves best),
And from the sun, and from the breezy air,
Sweet influences trembled o’er his frame;
And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious meanings in the forms of Nature!
And so, his senses gradually wrapped
In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark,
That singest like an angel in the clouds!

My God! it is a melancholy thing
For such a man, who would full fain preserve
His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
For all his human brethren—O my God!
It weighs upon the heart, that he must think
What uproar and what strife may now be stirring
This way or that way o’er these silent hills—
Invasion, and the thunder and the shout,
And all the crash of onset; fear and rage,
And undetermined conflict—even now,
Even now, perchance, and in his native isle:
Carnage and groans beneath this blessed sun!
We have offended, Oh! my countrymen!
We have offended very grievously,
And been most tyrannous. From east to west
A groan of accusation pierces Heaven!
The wretched plead against us; multitudes
Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on,
Steamed up from Cairo’s swamps of pestilence,
Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth
And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
With slow perdition murders the whole man,
His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home,
All individual dignity and power
Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions,
Associations and Societies,
A vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,
One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,
We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth;
Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
Yet bartering freedom and the poor man’s life
For gold, as at a market! The sweet words
Of Christian promise, words that even yet
Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
Are muttered o’er by men, whose tones proclaim
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade:
Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent
To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth.
Oh! blasphemous! the Book of Life is made
A superstitious instrument, on which
We gabble o’er the oaths we mean to break;
For all must swear—all and in every place,
College and wharf, council and justice-court;
All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,
Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
The rich, the poor, the old man and the young;
All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
That faith doth reel; the very name of God
Sounds like a juggler’s charm; and, bold with joy,
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, “Where is it?”

Thankless too for peace,
(Peace long preserved by fleets and perilous seas)
Secure from actual warfare, we have loved
To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
Alas! for ages ignorant of all
Its ghastlier workings, (famine or blue plague,
Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,)
We, this whole people, have been clamorous
For war and bloodshed; animating sports,
The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,
Spectators and not combatants! No guess
Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,
No speculation on contingency,
However dim and vague, too vague and dim
To yield a justifying cause; and forth,
(Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names,
And adjurations of the God in Heaven,)
We send our mandates for the certain death
Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
And women, that would groan to see a child
Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war,
The best amusement for our morning meal!
The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, who knows scarcely words enough
To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
And technical in victories and defeats,
And all our dainty terms for fratricide;
Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues
Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
We join no feeling and attach no form!
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch,
Who fell in battle, doing ****** deeds,
Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed;
As though he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen!
And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony
Of our fierce doings?

Spare us yet awhile,
Father and God! O, spare us yet awhile!
Oh! let not English women drag their flight
Fainting beneath the burthen of their babes,
Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday
Laughed at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands, all
Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms
Which grew up with you round the same fireside,
And all who ever heard the Sabbath-bells
Without the Infidel’s scorn, make yourselves pure!
Stand forth! be men! repel an impious foe,
Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,
Who laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of ******; and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
Poison life’s amities, and cheat the heart
Of faith and quiet hope, and all that soothes,
And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;
Render them back upon the insulted ocean,
And let them toss as idly on its waves
As the vile seaweed, which some mountain-blast
Swept from our shores! And oh! may we return
Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
Repenting of the wrongs with which we stung
So fierce a foe to frenzy!

I have told,
O Britons! O my brethren! I have told
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or fractious or mistimed;
For never can true courage dwell with them
Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
At their own vices. We have been too long
Dupes of a deep delusion! Some, belike,
Groaning with restless enmity, expect
All change from change of constituted power;
As if a Government had been a robe
On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged
Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe
Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach
A radical causation to a few
Poor drudges of chastising Providence,
Who borrow all their hues and qualities
From our own folly and rank wickedness,
Which gave them birth and nursed them. Others, meanwhile,
Dote with a mad idolatry; and all
Who will not fall before their images,
And yield them worship, they are enemies
Even of their country!

Such have I been deemed.—
But, O dear Britain! O my Mother Isle!
Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
A husband, and a father! who revere
All bonds of natural love, and find them all
Within the limits ot thy rocky shores.
O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honourable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its future being?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country! O divine
And beauteous Island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!—

May my fears,
My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze:
The light has left the summit of the hill,
Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,
Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,
Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!
On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled
From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,
I find myself upon the brow, and pause
Startled! And after lonely sojourning
In such a quiet and surrounded nook,
This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,
Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty
Of that huge amphitheatre of rich
And elmy fields, seems like society—
Conversing with the mind, and giving it
A livelier impulse and a dance of thought!
And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
And my babe’s mother dwell in peace! With light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
And grateful, that by nature’s quietness
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.

In this Monody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately
drowned  in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637;
and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy,
then in their height.


Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
         Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse:
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destined urn,
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!
         For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright
Toward heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;
Tempered to the oaten flute,
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.
         But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.
         Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream
RHad ye been there,S . . . for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
         Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd’s trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But, the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. RBut not the praise,”
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
RFame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.”
         O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea,
That came in Neptune’s plea.
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
         Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
Ah! who hath reft,” quoth he, Rmy dearest pledge?”
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean Lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:—
RHow well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as, for their bellies’ sake,
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped:
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”
         Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf **** the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the ***** freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so, to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise,
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where’er thy bones are hurled;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold.
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
         Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That Sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
         Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey:
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

My sweetest soldier left me and was dragged across the sea
My nights are now silent and my heart is drowned with fear
So, here I cannot stand to be

Through weary nights I held my guard
'till the stars came out to torment me
For, all the beauty of the night was now forever marred

My heart trembled with the candlelight
So I went to seek her chambers,but all was locked and barred
Even whispered words from my dear soldiers could do little to ease my fright

I wrote letters to my sweetest knight with sparkling, savage fury
I fought sleep away with every ounce of my might
Too soon, my hands and eyes grew weary

I filled my pages with stories of beasts we would nevermore fight
my eyes where too full of tears so I could not see clearly
I've lost my dearest companion and the bringer of my light

She sent letters back,of course, and they were wept over with many a tear
For a day, sprigs of goldenrod adorned my collar bright
for a day, at least, I forgot to think of fear

Then I had dreams of feathered serpents wrapped around her throat
her eyes were scratched out by hoary hell-kites and her heart was pierced with a spear
All my daylight hours, and all my nighttime too, to my knight I did devote

We continued writing letters and I lead my soldiers too
no one ever asked of what this did denote
'till fever caught me by my throat and threw my mind askew

My hands shook too violently and ink had streaked my page
In my letters, I tried so hard to have my pain seem subdued
My dear light-bringer needn't fear a fever's shallow rage

She saw through my ruse too quickly and I think she panicked more
I tried to calm her with winged words and locks of sage
I promised her there was a cure

My dreams were fueled by fire and the darkness lurking there
when I woke I fell sobbing to the freezing floor
She would have gathered me in her arms and kept me in her care

Beasts and berserkers set my night under siege
I could only see my sweetest knight scarred by bloodless warfare
Her spirit fell to the mercy of my new-found, thankless liege

My throat was streaked with clawing pain
cups of water I did beseech
bitter liquid assailed my body and bound my fate with chains

I saw my sweetest soldier and her hands skimmed through my hair
Her eyes shined like pearls which I hoped she would retain
Her kisses on my cheeks were so radiant and rare

I knew then never would we be apart
and in my chambers with the firelight there
I could rest with the keeper of my heart

I sing of life at state expense
a state devoid of common sense
addicted to obesity
impolitic in body weight
yet headed for austerity
as other people’s money ends
plebeian class-revolt transcends
our bureaucratic history.

They stack the monthly welfare decks
complain the service second-rate
those sullen clients, thankless louts
pajama-clad with tattooed pouts
whose girlfriends swell while babies cry;
the fathers mumble, sagging high
and wait in lines. The women try
to fool the lunar period
conceptions waxing myriad
while teenage dads discover ***
and social workers cash the checks
the daily urban nightmare is
enough to scare a nation broke
in clouds of marijuana smoke:
the cashless global mystery.

The breeders born in tropic lands
are tempted till they take the bait
no baby-momma understands
what family means, what life demands
Your undertakers overstate
in order to remunerate
your Democratic history:
a bankrupt urban mystery
the not-so-Great Society.

The ghetto *****-donation ploy
makes babies but maintains the boy
to run around from mom to mom
slow-motion population bomb
as if to merely demonstrate
that social program funders wait
till number-crunchers aggravate
the urban teenage welfare state.

forever alone-
even in the midst of my fellows
I am alone-
how I long to know the gentle caress
of your warm hands
how I wish to know the answer to the question:
is every one of my kind as alone as I?

I lay in wait for just a hint of your presence.
This cold and damp room
I have been deposited to
offers no condolences of comfort.
Thankless mortuary of life,
grounding point for unending successions of failure.
Mold grows abundant and varied on every surface,
forever feeding,
forever decaying-
forever reminding- the self defense I practice
is no match for time.

I have surrendered myself to your will
you repay my penance with stoic indifference,
how I curse my fate, to be stuck in this condition
stuck in this form
stuck in this cycle of irrelevance
where my purpose is as obscured as your presence-
I know it is there- I catch glimmers of it,
wafting on fumes of promise
welling up through my limbs-
yet, as I try to focus on its sweetness,  it melts away
and my condition teeters on the realization of the futility of my dreams,
dreams that perhaps there is something in this world I may possess,
something exempt from this foetid destiny of decay.

I pray to you every day- you bestow to me sustenance, delivered
within the few short moments of clarity
when your benevolence washes over my limbs
and that chill is abated, temporarily.  

oh love I need you
I need you
I need you
I need you-oh-
I need you now...

The joy you give me wells up in my core-
it spirals through my body in radiant fumes
arousing within me an electricity
which charges and grows, crackling and rippling through my being-

Your weightless touch
caresses the supple flesh of my newly unfurled limbs
your heat makes my lust ignite
until my rapture bursts and floods fragrantly out of my body
through small delicate folds soft as angel’s lips
burning crimson flames in contrast to the relentless leaden landscape.


Much like my prayers,
these too wither and evaporate back into the rimple of your coat of infinite possibility.
I am left broken, exploited by a purpose
that has been kept hidden from me.
Fate has decreed I must blossom during winter
serving as a beacon to the world around me,
I implore you my beloved,  who will serve as my beacon?
Who will lend vibrance to my dismal soul
when the skies are gray
and the cold lingers ever-present like a blade to the throat?

oh love I need you
I need you
I need you
I need you-oh-
I need you now...

I continue to endure
these seasons of deception.  
The offerings of my flesh, my soul, my intentions
are hung in severe strings
as reminders of the union I may never have
reminders that I will never be as perfect as I know is possible-
that most of my dreams
will miscarry to oblivion and their potentials as realities will slip away as fast as the thoughts that carried them-
slip away as fast as the memory of my existence.

the only thing keeping me from joining you
is me
my form, this body, this anchor to the Earth.
In spite of this forlorn existence, I try to brighten my world-
my offerings are these poems of flesh,
frail and transient
moments of sublimity
apices of material existence
bridges to the divine

Exercises in wishfulness do nothing to change states.
What I truly desire is freedom,
freedom from these roots
freedom from hunger
freedom from wishes
freedom from these interminable winters
freedom from this sadness
freedom from this life

How much time has passed
Since the ***** in my armour last
Which stops flow coming
The space between sleepers
Slowing their moments
For the sake of a sorrowed spark
Making his mark on the pavement
How can these folk forsake the blatant laments
Of a pauper in king’s garments crying for change?

My gloat fails the throat
Instead of truth I sooth what is meant to be
Yet my soothing words fall to entropy before I manifest a pardon
For this lack of gratitude for art's garden
That has befallen the concrete cobbled empire
Of these glorified mongers of time
They give it away like infinite wisdom
Slipping from their grasp with every second
Spent in line looking forward to their freedom

Instead of seizing it in their hands
Primal roar to get past that meiopy
In the name of her majesty the queer
Peering out from her crystal mountain
With her blue blood and scaled skull
Tax checking the pardoned fortnight
That expensive foresight they can ill afford
Painted on their contours so beautiful
I try to drag it out
But like atlas, my groans
They bounce about and fall short

Of merchants' wails for biased expression
Promoting depression of consciousness
Spontaneous mess I create to shake the slumber
But grow humbler at my failure to save
Every single one of them
Young and old
Mothers and fathers
With the twirk of a wrist

How children see more and through them we will work
With their wide open hearts lies the start of the new world
So let us show them how
Then the universe will be never ending
Much like this thankless task

kiss-hug the red-line intention
to a snapper fish lipstick, you
sick thankless. thankless to the
fact that thankful is relative--

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW, CAN YOU HEAR ME PICK UP PICKUP PICKUUUUP

trucks continue to glide down the
Trans-Canada highway as I wonder
if I've been getting high the right way.
I'm a snitch and I found me. Tell me
where I'm hiding.

it's Thanksgiving
and the only thing I'm thankful for
is the alcohol in my blood stream
suppressing my thoughts
and silencing my screams

it's Thanksgiving
and I wish I could be thankful
you're gone
but I'd really only ever be thankful
if you had never entered my life at all

1.

do Drugs because without Drugs
there is no inspiration
without inspiration
there is no Drugs

this is all said with wide distant looks
with swinging wrists
fingers comb the hair
fingers pick at the skin

without Drugs
there is no poetry

no music
no ambition
no sleep

there is no awkwardly standing there
as he tells you,

little bee, joust teen mean huts

there is no biased observer
watching the Drugged tumble
like laundry
down stairs.

surely this can’t be a good idea

don’t try to leave
don’t be awkward

surely

2.

do Drugs because you will see
finally see!
things no one else could ever see

so swallow that joint
eat that pill
smoke those shrooms,
but for the love of GOD!
not by themselves
place them strategically
in a peanut butter sandwich
like stars in a constellation

you will know better next time
he tells you to smoke shrooms

you will feel your bare feet
but you’re wearing socks!
you will feel like you’re crying
but there aren’t any tears!
you will see your curtains take the shape of your mother
folding her arms
looking down at you
wearing a dress
that isn’t her color
or her size
or her style
or even her at all

finally you will see these things
that you were never able to see before

question the experience
and he will sigh
with sighs of such size
that say you just don’t understand

3.

do Drugs because you will realize

Alex Grey paintings
in that pin-up calendar
will mean so much more

which painting is brightly looming over your birth month?
oh, so, the one that looks quite good
where the subject’s skin is transparent
revealing muscles and veins and organs
a stock buddhist symbol glowing on their forehead
their mouth agape
a misty sort of energy
radiating from their body
swallowed by neon

what a coincidence

mine, too

he’s a Grey-t artist, isn’t he?
don’t say this
despite how clever it sounds

4.

do Drugs because
there will be a moment
when that cartooned weasel
with his too-appropriate leather jacket
and lollipop stick ***** from a snaggled lip
and Nancy Reagan
her wild hair
her eyes that seem to be sinking inward
will seem like the same person

this is just your guilt
your incessant questioning
of what is right
and what is rite

your wanting to just say no
and to just do it
resting in the same swaying sweaty hammock

your waning spirit to overthink

and he will just look at you
as though no one feels
the way you do

you will never understand

5.

do Drugs because you must understand
because you’ve always understood
because you’ve always been understanding

intangible ideas will whisper vaguely at you
that you thought you knew enough about

you just aren’t feeling the love like we are
you just aren’t seeing the universe like we are
you just aren’t feeling the energy like we are
you just aren’t seeing the beauty of things like we are

love universe energy beauty
these things are simple
when gruffly whispered
over a slice of space cake

this space cake is out of this world!
don’t say this
despite how clever it sounds

6.

do Drugs because
you will have the perfect disorder
for your flaws

flaw and disorder

I’m out of it because
I might of inhaled a little
too much

I’m thankless because
of a pill I should not have
taken

I’m jittery because
I swallowed a couple
extra

I’m sleepy because
I would rather feel this way than look
at you

I fell down the stairs
because it’s Cinco de Mayo
and I can’t find my grinder
and I’m surprised that you’re sober
and I can’t feel my shoulder
and I’m surprised you’re not older

I swear I’m not always like this

Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What’s good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others’ action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it’s fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing—
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing—
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can ****.

You and poem thief are reasons I don't trust most blacks.
You gonna love a poem thief and cover up what she did, you deserve outing

This is for being part of a cover up and getting me called a liar
You got me called a trouble maker by someone I respected

Told a nice woman about you and poem thief
Thanks ******* for making me look like the one who lied on you. You deserve outing for lying to that nice woman about you not knowing the one who is ******* COMPUTER POETRY

You gonna love a poem thief and cover up what she did, you deserve outing
Outing you cause I HATE a ****** liar!!!!
BEEN SAVING DM'S ACTIVITY BEFORE HE COULD REMOVE MORE OF IT. I CALLED ATTENTION TO HIS WRITING I LOVE YOU ON ******* COMPUTER P. POEMS AND ******* DELETED I LOVE YOU COMMENT.

OK DM YOU LIED *******!
COPY PASTING YOUR WORDS AND WHAT YOU WROTE TO THE ONE WHO STOLE MY POEMS.

DM  
personal hell    1964 -  
Unimportant.

COMMENTS IN POEM YESTERDAY -

heads up
Someone has been logging in under different peoples names and posting a lot of trash. They've even been stealing other peoples work and twisting it and claiming it as their own. They've even sent comments under my name that I didn't make. Be careful.


YOUR COMMENTS TO ******* COMPUTER P's DELETED PROFILE BUT POEMS ARE STILL THERE. THE ONE WHO STOLE MY POEMS. TOOK THESE  FROM YOUR "ACTIVITY" THREAD. YOU CAN'T HIDE WHAT YOU DO ON THIS SITE YOU LYING *******.

PROVING HE'S IN LOVE WITH POEM THIEF *****. HIS WORDS NOT MINE.

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
You send sweet sweetyness!

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
Amazing still! You have an edge about you. Thankless more often than not.

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
Sorry. Just wanted to get in your pants. You have pants right?

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
Stranded *****! Working at Game-stop ***** even more. You have a real gift! Your words are amazing but disclose little in context. A portrait of you is already displayed. Bring your horizon as the sun sets and the moon arises. Awesome job dude!

DM›My new poem by ---  3 days ago
******* amazing! If my throat were as dry as yours, perhaps I could write as well! I'm living proof that arid stupidiciousness conceals rather than enlightens. My meager attempts seem weak and impotent. Your words hover above me and like clouded sky give and offer truest meaning. I love you...hello!

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
You seem to be having a wonderful time here! Congrats to you! That's what its all about! Free-form poetry and prose.

DM›My new poem by ---  1 day ago
Scratch where it itches my friend. Sometimes until it bleeds.

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
And she breathed, and you took a breathe at the same time, you asked yourself why? Then you realized that it was your own expectation that followed you here, she's just a girl. Just as alone and frightened as you. She's only there coz she hungry. You're only there to feed her.

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
Being ' Mr right' and becoming 'Mr right' are always separate.

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
Falling down doesn't mean falling easy. My God if it were so simple. Express and lose or hold and lose. Die on your feet or live on your knees.

DM ›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
Absolutely love this beautiful poem. Such intimate sadness here. Quite touching.

DM › lesson not learned by shaqila  Dec 5
Absolutely love this beautiful poem. Such intimate sadness here. Quite touching.

IF HE DIDN'T THINK ******* COMPUTER P AND SHAQILA ARE ONE IN SAME, WHY
WRITE ALL THESE ****** COMMENTS ON HER POEMS?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Every New Year's Eve, my family and I receive friends and acquaintances at a formal (dinner jacket) party.

A few ladies come dressed in trousers. When once I was asked my preference as to how a lady should be dressed for such occasion, and I responded "dressed with a skirt," the person called my decision one worthy of a dinosaur.

May I ask, please, is there a formula to indicate how a lady should be attired?

GENTLE READER: What you are asking for is trouble.

Mind you, Miss Manners thoroughly agrees that it is a shame that many ladies no longer really dress up, even for gala occasions.

She has noticed an odd trend in the last decade or so. It used to be that gentlemen groused about wearing dinner jackets and tried to get away with less, or with some funny variation, while ladies wore serious evening dresses. Now she still sees unmatched couples, but more often the gentlemen in conventional evening dress, while the ladies are austerely attired in plain black silk trousers with perhaps a bright jacket.

This is perhaps a skewered view, because Miss Manners is speaking of private formal dinners and parties, not charity ***** honoring some designer, and not award ceremonies. But she sees this even among those few who still have some formality in their lives — and who would not therefore consider it a one-time waste to invest in evening clothes.

For that matter, orchestras commonly comprise properly dressed males while the females, for whom one black dress (or, for cellists, perhaps the festive trousers known as palazzo pajamas) would be a working uniform, wear informal black outfits.

Miss Manners recognizes that life has been getting increasingly informal. Nevertheless, she notices that the resulting hunger for more style — or just an occasional change — breaks out at proms and weddings, often with peculiar results.

So she is in sympathy with your wish. All the same, she knows that indignation and derision are the inevitable reactions to any attempt to discuss, let alone mandate, dress.

Changing fashion, comfort and self-expression will all be cited, and Miss Manners does not deny that these are factors worthy of consideration. But it is not that hard to satisfy all three within the different general standards that apply to different occasions. That Miss Manners happens to prefer skirts to trousers does not prevent her from looking suitably informal (not to mention fetching) at picnics.

Nevertheless, issuing any directive other than the conventional "black tie" (or "white tie") will just annoy people, who will ignore it anyway.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have seen holiday cards where a friend has put a slash through her printed name on the sign-off.

read more:http://www.marieaustralia.com

www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses

grabbing her by throat hair he holds gun barrel to right eye with free hand she edges fingers into boot pulls dagger plunges it into his heart

i didn’t mean to do that i meant to do this

i’m trying to figure out how other people deal with disappointment of old age i guess they arrive at some settlement some settlement that eludes me

very few figure out meaning of their lives until it’s too late then become detectives trying to figure out whys if you wake up tomorrow you’ve got a shot at new day no one in this world knows what might happen

i believe people can do change maybe not their nature but spiritually emotionally intellectually psychologically i recognize change within myself i did could now never commit acts different from who i was more scared sensitive hopeful pure honest longing for love probably i sound corny all i want is mutual love adoration in way it was easier when i was thoughtless i got ***** i don’t know

poet must face every conceivable fear terror no matter how despairing risk walking away from table without chips

there are good people and bad people sometimes good people make bad mistakes sometimes bad people make smart choices

for decades he lived knowing no one valued him except his family collecting his paintings reading his works praising his efforts his entire career an inside job

her graying disheveled hair muddy smudged apron raw arthritic fingers she cooks meal washes dishes a million trillion dishes thankless life mom what’s for dinner

some people see it all coming plan invest i never saw any of it coming i never imagined

the sickly smell of grandpa’s farts lingers in room nauseating family

he held shivering abandoned puppy in arms she whimpered repeatedly he swore in that moment to protect her stood by his promise until he buried her

wild wolf chases him growling snapping nipping at ankles tearing jeans biting drawing blood he runs

pitiable old men everyone knows old men are impotent jokes with no pack to punch just harmless peevish impediments what good are they what purpose do they serve get the ******-freaking out of the road old man

riotous advancing mob overcome military police

sharing yoga class old man attending his skin thin as parchment bled i cleaned his blood from mat every class until he died

after puncturing her maidenhood reaching ****** he strokes head of 8 year old daughter good girl good girl daddy is so proud

skin him alive skin him alive little girl asks what’s different about poetry from standard writing grandpa answers i have no answers

not possible yet happening gradually suddenly amidst bribes bargaining lies government collapses citizenry unleash in anarchy yearning for change

Mom’s fogginess i sense it beginning in myself possibly inherited will i become like Mom there’s no one looking out for me Mom i’m looking out for you

after 30 or 40 years life is over don’t believe what they tell you

when i’m dead what will they unearth in my personal effects writings paintings letters emails bookmarks internet visitations or gossip accusations from those still alive probably allege another selfish decadent fool squandered resources missed opportunities misses the mark

maybe in 5 years i will live in New York City London Paris Tokyo Tahiti  with beautiful wife who will spread her buns want me to **** her grab my ***** at least once a day

there is a star in north sky that shines i understand you looking away when pain gets too great please look into my eyes when throbbing subsides

don’t make it any harder than it has to be please find it in your heart to forgive me i am so sorry

yup i’ve got cash guns friends in Canada Mexico Netherlands France first let’s make a run for the border  then later think about a boat

oh yeah one last remark ******* haters bigots greedy ******* all you big city fat cats small town big fish fearful suburban housewives over-cautious grannies gangsters politicians real-estate lawyers moneylenders fraudulent priests ******* all you movie actor phony smile celebrities cliché skinny jean cowboy boot rock stars all you left-wing right-wing tea-party outer-space inner-space freaks ******* i can’t don’t know how to explain myself ******* all

If fire and wire spin webs of desire, what then cuts shadow and fog away?
Neon streams of gold carve rivers through canyons of darkness, a newborn sun.
That's what you are, you illuminate the void no matter how far. How lucky we are to have one such as you, for life without light is a life without love. How many thankless nights you were here. Keeping watch over our fears seeing they don't grow out of control. Seeing your light is what kept me whole.

Autumn, like an Indian classical dancer, dressed up
Arrives with soft rhymes and quickening steps
She comes aglow, aglow with a rare beauty
Dancing to the bracelet's tinkling song
Her floating robe falls in deep folds around her feet
As she mesmerizes all with moves full of grace
Viewing the flaming colours in assorted display
We are apt to wonder if Nature carefully saved up
All that is best for the closing grand finale
Autumn tints look enchanting all through the land
With pervading green, offset by crimson, citrus yellow
Flaming red, lustrous gold and a faded russet
The air stays crisp and sweet in the ripening fields
While stray clouds ramble in flawless turquoise sky

When autumn is thus all agog like a frenzied dervish
It gives us morbid pictures of death and decay
The trees wrestle to free themselves of their worn cloaks
Causing a cascade of withering autumn leaves
Now they fall scattered in endless stream and lie in piles
Like charred carcasses after a fierce forest fire
The rustle of dry leaves blown by the wind
Falls in our ears with the gabble of migrating birds
Pale sunshine sifts through leafless trees of maple and oak
All those leaves once stayed regal in stations high
But now tossed out like worthless chaff
They come nose diving and fall several meters below
Spreading a hazel curtain over the moist earthen crust
When trampled mercilessly by careless feet
They silently mourn their thankless fate

Graying that comes at the end of each autumnal fall
Reminds us of the pall of gloom that awaits
It is disturbing like the parting song of birds
As they fly southward before the fall of winter

There’s the death waiting to pounce over,
Only left is the aftermath of the tides left over.
She lay isolated far away from mankind,
She was the loving and dedicated nurse of a kind.
A deadly virus had spread the blanket over her.
Probably her inner conscience spoke of,
The limited time left with her,
Battling the Nipah virus will be soon over.

She committed herself to the thankless profession.
Had she not nursed the deadly virus affected patient,
Perhaps she would have been alive here today.
Too late, she realized that the same had taken
Over the life of her patient.
She felt saddened yet unknown to her was,
The virus had already infected her blood.

She never knew it would be her turn to bid bye.
Just a day ago she had fever,
Yet ignoring her health she continued her work.
Finally, her health started deteriorating,
So she got admitted in the same hospital.
She found herself in an isolated ward,
Which made her realize she too contracted the same.

Her husband has been just a wall away.
Though she wanted to see him and her little children.
But thinking of their security she paused there for moments.
She knew her fate was holding her hand to death.
Then she scribbled just few words for her beloved at the last!

Only we can pray today is “May her soul Rest In Peace!”

                           All Rights Reserved!

The young dedicated Indian nurse Lini Puthussery from Kerala needed to be applauded, awarded for her selfless service which costed her dear life while treating Nipah virus affected patient. She was attached to Perambara’s Tukul hospital
in Kozhikode, Calicut. We appreciate the young woman’s dedication to her thankless profession.
The Nipah virus infection, spread mainly by fruit bats and has symptoms like breathing trouble, brain swelling, fever, headache, drowsiness, disorientation and delirium. A patient can fall into coma within 48 hours. It travels through direct contact with a patient. There is no vaccine for Nipha virus yet, as per World Health Organization.

Courtesy Google!

Career politicians, who cluck
as they strut with an impotent pluck
make me sick with the season
befouling all reason:
they're less of a **** than a cuck.

That gobbler and turkey-neck Mitch
makes me furious—so mad that I twitch.
He obstructs every battle
while jiggling his wattle;
unpardoned, unworthy (but rich).

The patrician political class
is a party that speaks through its ***.
They are lacking in guts
with no ifs, ands, or buts
but I swear: they produce enough gas.



HAPPY THANXGIVING, Fellow Poets☺

Columbine upon my desk,
a dusty pinkish
unstable shade of purple -
aquilegia vulgaris -
thought to be thankless,
even a sign of ingratitude
this Orphelian flower.
Mine has ten doves in a circle,
though tradition claims it seven:
Holy Mary’s footsteps,
Isaiah’s Gifts of the Spirit.
For me it must remain those final bell-like
chords of Messiaen’s La Columbe,
described in his mother’s verse as
'Cloches d’angoisse et larmes d’adieu’.

Scraping off
The smiling Santa Claus faces
Dim hope fading
With each metallic fleck
Flicked onto the kitchen floor

Yet, she will buy more
Always more
And always the same numbers
On the gas station tickets
She buys with a bag of chips

And gas-station humus
With gas-station pop,
In a gas-station cup -
Too large to hold in one hand -
That she fills to the brim

With hope
She never lets herself
Get to empty
She fills her soul with
Perpetual certainty
That one day, she’s gotta win
She’s just gotta

So she plays the game
Plays the odds
Fills her cup
Fills up her tank

Drives to two, three, four
Thankless jobs
And never lets her soul
Get to empty

She’s just gotta win
Fate has gotta give in
To her sheer ambition,

She knows it in her bones
Maybe not this time,
or next time
…or the time after

But soon
…definitely soon

The white rose wilts in her garden
telling her that her love has died
and the tears of dew
are in unison of her own eyes

She did not want him to go
but he was duty bound
and in the shells of war
he wrote in blood his last note

For this was a war of slaughter
a war veiled in terrible death
a war of loss of good men
in the slime of generals glory

They noted the deaths
then they call for more
for more good men
to die in this war

A thankless and hard task
just like the 60's
but now all are frightened
where beauty lays betrayed

Such political wars
why do they not fight them
and leave the common man
in harmony and sweet peace


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

I can't make this up he loves poem thief check his profile activities
DM  
personal hell    1964 -  
Unimportant.

OK DM YOU LIED *******!
COPY PASTING YOUR WORDS AND WHAT YOU WROTE TO THE ONE WHO STOLE MY POEMS.

DM  
personal hell    1964 -  
Unimportant.

COMMENTS IN POEM YESTERDAY -

heads up
Someone has been logging in under different peoples names and posting a lot of trash. They've even been stealing other peoples work and twisting it and claiming it as their own. They've even sent comments under my name that I didn't make. Be careful.


YOUR COMMENTS TO ******* COMPUTER P's DELETED PROFILE BUT POEMS ARE STILL THERE. THE ONE WHO STOLE MY POEMS. TOOK THESE  FROM YOUR "ACTIVITY" THREAD. YOU CAN'T HIDE WHAT YOU DO ON THIS SITE YOU LYING *******.

PROVING HE'S IN LOVE WITH POEM THIEF *****. HIS WORDS NOT MINE.

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
You send sweet sweetyness!

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
Amazing still! You have an edge about you. Thankless more often than not.

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
Sorry. Just wanted to get in your pants. You have pants right?

DM›Untitled by ---  3 days ago
Stranded *****! Working at Game-stop ***** even more. You have a real gift! Your words are amazing but disclose little in context. A portrait of you is already displayed. Bring your horizon as the sun sets and the moon arises. Awesome job dude!

DM›My new poem by ---  3 days ago
******* amazing! If my throat were as dry as yours, perhaps I could write as well! I'm living proof that arid stupidiciousness conceals rather than enlightens. My meager attempts seem weak and impotent. Your words hover above me and like clouded sky give and offer truest meaning. I love you...hello!

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
You seem to be having a wonderful time here! Congrats to you! That's what its all about! Free-form poetry and prose.

DM›My new poem by ---  1 day ago
Scratch where it itches my friend. Sometimes until it bleeds.

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
And she breathed, and you took a breathe at the same time, you asked yourself why? Then you realized that it was your own expectation that followed you here, she's just a girl. Just as alone and frightened as you. She's only there coz she hungry. You're only there to feed her.

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
Being ' Mr right' and becoming 'Mr right' are always separate.

DM›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
Falling down doesn't mean falling easy. My God if it were so simple. Express and lose or hold and lose. Die on your feet or live on your knees.

DM ›Untitled by ---  1 day ago
Absolutely love this beautiful poem. Such intimate sadness here. Quite touching.

DM › lesson not learned by shaqila  Dec 5
Absolutely love this beautiful poem. Such intimate sadness here. Quite touching.

IF HE DIDN'T THINK ******* COMPUTER P AND SHAQILA ARE ONE IN SAME, WHY
WRITE ALL THESE ****** COMMENTS ON HER POEMS?

From the top rung of the ladder,
         she slowly steps backwards
seeing me  approach, touch down
        then, like a whirlwind, quickly turns
kisses me full on my lips
           with  such an urgency
love full of passion alone would explain,
          the feast for my eyes for
what seemed a long time, a fallacy of course
         is forgotten by my thankless mind,
but, oh! yes my lips now receive
          the same measure of pleasure,
  as a love potion, with a searing taste.