High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus displayed:—
  “Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven!—
For, since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen,
I give not Heaven for lost: from this descent
Celestial Virtues rising will appear
More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate!—
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven,
Did first create your leader—next, free choice
With what besides in council or in fight
Hath been achieved of merit—yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more
Established in a safe, unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer’s aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? Where there is, then, no good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction: for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence; none whose portion is so small
Of present pain that with ambitious mind
Will covet more! With this advantage, then,
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in Heaven, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assured us; and by what best way,
Whether of open war or covert guile,
We now debate. Who can advise may speak.”
  He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king,
Stood up—the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair.
His trust was with th’ Eternal to be deemed
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse,
He recked not, and these words thereafter spake:—
  “My sentence is for open war. Of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need; not now.
For, while they sit contriving, shall the rest—
Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait
The signal to ascend—sit lingering here,
Heaven’s fugitives, and for their dwelling-place
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame,
The prison of his ryranny who reigns
By our delay? No! let us rather choose,
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once
O’er Heaven’s high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the Torturer; when, to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine, he shall hear
Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels, and his throne itself
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,
His own invented torments. But perhaps
The way seems difficult, and steep to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe!
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
That in our porper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat; descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear
Insulting, and pursued us through the Deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? Th’ ascent is easy, then;
Th’ event is feared! Should we again provoke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find
To our destruction, if there be in Hell
Fear to be worse destroyed! What can be worse
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned
In this abhorred deep to utter woe!
Where pain of unextinguishable fire
Must exercise us without hope of end
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour,
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus,
We should be quite abolished, and expire.
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential—happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being!—
Or, if our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm,
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne:
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.”
  He ended frowning, and his look denounced
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous
To less than gods. On th’ other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane.
A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed
For dignity composed, and high exploit.
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low—
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful. Yet he pleased the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began:—
  “I should be much for open war, O Peers,
As not behind in hate, if what was urged
Main reason to persuade immediate war
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast
Ominous conjecture on the whole success;
When he who most excels in fact of arms,
In what he counsels and in what excels
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair
And utter dissolution, as the scope
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge.
First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are filled
With armed watch, that render all access
Impregnable: oft on the bodering Deep
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night,
Scorning surprise. Or, could we break our way
By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise
With blackest insurrection to confound
Heaven’s purest light, yet our great Enemy,
All incorruptible, would on his throne
Sit unpolluted, and th’ ethereal mould,
Incapable of stain, would soon expel
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire,
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope
Is flat despair: we must exasperate
Th’ Almighty Victor to spend all his rage;
And that must end us; that must be our cure—
To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated Night,
Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows,
Let this be good, whether our angry Foe
Can give it, or will ever? How he can
Is doubtful; that he never will is sure.
Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire,
Belike through impotence or unaware,
To give his enemies their wish, and end
Them in his anger whom his anger saves
To punish endless? ‘Wherefore cease we, then?’
Say they who counsel war; ‘we are decreed,
Reserved, and destined to eternal woe;
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,
What can we suffer worse?’ Is this, then, worst—
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms?
What when we fled amain, pursued and struck
With Heaven’s afflicting thunder, and besought
The Deep to shelter us? This Hell then seemed
A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay
Chained on the burning lake? That sure was worse.
What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,
Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,
And plunge us in the flames; or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? What if all
Her stores were opened, and this firmament
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire,
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall
One day upon our heads; while we perhaps,
Designing or exhorting glorious war,
Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled,
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey
Or racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains,
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
Ages of hopeless end? This would be worse.
War, therefore, open or concealed, alike
My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye
Views all things at one view? He from Heaven’s height
All these our motions vain sees and derides,
Not more almighty to resist our might
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.
Shall we, then, live thus vile—the race of Heaven
Thus trampled, thus expelled, to suffer here
Chains and these torments? Better these than worse,
By my advice; since fate inevitable
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree,
The Victor’s will. To suffer, as to do,
Our strength is equal; nor the law unjust
That so ordains. This was at first resolved,
If we were wise, against so great a foe
Contending, and so doubtful what might fall.
I laugh when those who at the spear are bold
And venturous, if that fail them, shrink, and fear
What yet they know must follow—to endure
Exile, or igominy, or bonds, or pain,
The sentence of their Conqueror. This is now
Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,
Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit
His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed,
Not mind us not offending, satisfied
With what is punished; whence these raging fires
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames.
Our purer essence then will overcome
Their noxious vapour; or, inured, not feel;
Or, changed at length, and to the place conformed
In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat; and, void of pain,
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting—since our present lot appears
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe.”
  Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason’s garb,
Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth,
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon spake:—
  “Either to disenthrone the King of Heaven
We war, if war be best, or to regain
Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we then
May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife.
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain
The latter; for what place can be for us
Within Heaven’s bound, unless Heaven’s Lord supreme
We overpower? Suppose he should relent
And publish grace to all, on promise made
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hyms, and to his Godhead sing
Forced hallelujahs, while he lordly sits
Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,
Our servile offerings? This must be our task
In Heaven, this our delight. How wearisome
Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue,
By force impossible, by leave obtained
Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous when great things of small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse,
We can create, and in what place soe’er
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain
Through labour and endurance. This deep world
Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven’s all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,
And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar.
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell!
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please? This desert soil
Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold;
Nor want we skill or art from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show more?
Our torments also may, in length of time,
Become our elements, these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise.”
  He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled
Th’ assembly as when hollow rocks retain
The sound of blustering winds, which all night long
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull
Seafaring men o’erwatched, whose bark by chance
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay
After the tempest. Such applause was heard
As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased,
Advising peace: for such another field
They dreaded worse than Hell; so much the fear
Of thunder and the sword of Michael
Wrought still within them; and no less desire
To found this nether empire, which might rise,
By policy and long process of time,
In emulation opposite to Heaven.
Which when Beelzebub perceived—than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat—with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state. Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer’s noontide air, while thus he spake:—
  “Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring of Heaven,
Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote
Inclines—here to continue, and build up here
A growing empire; doubtless! while we dream,
And know not that the King of Heaven hath doomed
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt
From Heaven’s high jurisdiction, in new league
Banded against his throne, but to remain
In strictest *******, though thus far removed,
Under th’ inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude. For he, to be sure,
In height or depth, still first and last will reign
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part
By our revolt, but over Hell extend
His empire, and with iron sceptre rule
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven.
What sit we then projecting peace and war?
War hath determined us and foiled with loss
Irreparable; terms of peace yet none
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given
To us enslaved, but custody severe,
And stripes and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted? and what peace can we return,
But, to our power, hostility and hate,
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though slow,
Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
In doing what we most in suffering feel?
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need
With dangerous expedition to invade
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege,
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find
Some easier enterprise? There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven
Err not)—another World, the happy seat
Of some new race, called Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favoured more
Of him who rules above; so was his will
Pronounced among the Gods, and by an oath
That shook Heaven’s whole circumference confirmed.
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould
Or substance, how endued, and what their power
And where their weakness: how attempted best,
By force of subtlety. Though Heaven be shut,
And Heaven’s high Arbitrator sit secure
In his own strength, this place may lie exposed,
The utmost border of his kingdom, left
To their defence who hold it: here, perhaps,
Some advantageous act may be achieved
By sudden onset—either with Hell-fire
To waste his whole creation, or possess
All as our own, and drive, as we were driven,
The puny habitants; or, if not drive,
****** them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our confusion, and our joy upraise
In his disturbance; when his darling sons,
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse
Their frail original, and faded bliss—
Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain empires.” Thus beelzebub
Pleaded his devilish counsel—first devised
By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence,
But

Gauguin or Michener
horizon lust inspired,
The South Pacific desired.
From early childhood on.
Fiji in the 70’s all alone in
A Personal journey of self
and world discovery.

From the big island of
Viti Levu, embarked
on native small boat, fifty
miles out to the Yasawa group.
Reaching tiny Yaqeta with
300 souls living close to the bone,
No Running water, or electric spark
glowing. Remarkably bright stars
shine at night, no city lights showing
to hide their heavenly glow.

Unspoiled Melanesian Island people
Meagerly surviving only on the sea
and a thousand plus years of tradition.

I welcomed like a friend of long
standing, with smiling faces and
open sprits. Once eaters of other
humans beings, converted now to
Methodist believers.

Their Island beautiful beyond belief,
Azure pristine seas in every direction,
Coral reefs abounding with aquatic life.
Paradise found and deeply appreciated.
I swam and fished, played with the kids
and laid about in my hammock, enjoying
weeks of splendor alongside people
I came to revere, generous and loving
at peace with themselves and nature,
Embracing a stranger like a family member.

My small transistor radio warned big
Cyclone brewing, of Hurricane proportions.
My thoughts turned to Tidal Waves.
The village and all those people
living a few feet above sea level.
Tried to express my concerns to
my host family and others, getting
but smiles and shrugs in return.
Spoken communication almost
nonexistent, me no Fijian spoken,
Them, little English understood.

It started with rain, strong winds,
Worsening building by the minute.
The villagers’ merely tightening down
the hatches of their stick, thatch houses.
Content it seemed to ride out the storm,
As I assumed they always did.

Shouldering heavy backpack
I hugged my friends and headed
for high ground, the ridgebacks
of low mountains, the backbones
of the Island. Feeling guilty leaving
them to their fate from high water.
Perplexed, they ignored my warnings.

In half an hour winds strong enough
to take me off my feet, blowing even
from the other side of the Island.
On a ridge flank I hunkered down,
pulled rubber poncho over my body,
Laying in watershed running inches deep
cascading down slopes to the sea below.

The wind grew to astounding ferocity,
Later gusts reported approaching 160
miles per hour. Pushing me along
the ground closer to the cliff edge
and a 80 foot plunge to the sea below,
Clinging to cliff with fingers and toes.

For three hours it raged, trees blowing
off the summit above, disappearing into
the clouds and stormy wet mist beyond.

A false calm came calling, the eye of the
Cyclone hovered over the Island, as I
picked my drenched self up and made my
way over blown down trees and scattered
storm debris to the Village of my hosts.

Most wooden, tin roofed structures gone
or caved in, the few Island boats broken
and thrown up onto the land. Remarkably
many of the small one room “Bure” thatched
huts still stood. Designed by people that knew
the ways if big winds.

The high waves had not come as I feared.
Badly damaged, yet the village endured,
As did most of the people, some broken
bones, but, mercifully, no worse.

Back with my host family, in their Bure,
new preparations ensued, the big winds I
was informed would now return from the
opposite direction, and would be even worse.

For another four hours the little grass and
stick House shook, nearly rising from the
ground, held together only by woven vine
ropes, and hope, additional ropes looped
over roof beams held down by our bare
hands. Faith and old world knowledge
is a wonderful thing.

Two days past and no one came to check on
the Island, alone the people worked to save
their planted gardens from the salt water
contaminated ground, cleaned up debris and
set to mending their grass homes. The only fresh
Water well still unpolluted was busily used.

With a stoic resolve, from these self-reliant people,
life seemed to go on, this not the first wind blown
disaster they had endured, Cyclones I learned
came every year, though this one, named “Bebe”
worst in the memories of the old men of the island.

On the third day a boy came running,
having spotted and hailed a Motor yacht,
which dropped anchor in the lagoon on the
opposite side of the Island.

I swam out to the boat and was welcomed
aboard by the Australian skipper and crew.
Shared a cold Coke, ham sandwich and tales
of our respective adventures of surviving.
They agreed to carry me back to the Big Island.

A crewman returned me ashore in a dingy.
I crossed the island and retrieved my things,
Bidding and hugging my friends in farewell.
I asked permission to write a story about the
storm and the village, the elders' smiles agreed,
they had nothing to loose, seemed pleased.

One last time I traversed the island and stepped
Into the yachts small rowboat, my back to
the island. Hearing a commotions I turned
seeing many people gathering along the
shores beach. I climbed out and went among
them, hugging most in farewell, some and
me too with tears in our eyes, fondness, respect
reflected, shared, received.

As the skiff rowed away  halfway to the ship,
the Aussie mate made a motion with his eyes
and chin, back towards the beach.

Turning around in my seat I saw there
most of the island population, gathered,
many held aloft small pieces of colored cloth,
tiny flags of farewell waving in the breeze,
they were singing, chanting a island song,
slow, like a lament of sorts.

Overwhelmed, I stood and faced the shore,
opened wide my arms, as to embrace them all,
tears of emotions unashamedly ran down my face.
Seeing the people on the beach, the Aussie crewman
intoned, “****** marvelous that. Good on 'ya mate.”

Yes, I remember Fiji and Cyclone Bebe, most of all
I fondly remember my Island brothers and sisters.

                                    End

Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme—
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revelled in—
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope—that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope—O God! I can—
Its fount is holier—more divine—
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit
Bowed from its wild pride into shame
O yearning heart! I did inherit
Thy withering portion with the fame,
The searing glory which hath shone
Amid the Jewels of my throne,
Halo of Hell! and with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again—
O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The undying voice of that dead time,
With its interminable chime,
Rings, in the spirit of a spell,
Upon thy emptiness—a knell.

I have not always been as now:
The fevered diadem on my brow
I claimed and won usurpingly—
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Caesar—this to me?
The heritage of a kingly mind,
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind.
On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head,
And, I believe, the winged strife
And tumult of the headlong air
Have nestled in my very hair.

So late from Heaven—that dew—it fell
(’Mid dreams of an unholy night)
Upon me with the touch of Hell,
While the red flashing of the light
From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,
Appeared to my half-closing eye
The pageantry of monarchy;
And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar
Came hurriedly upon me, telling
Of human battle, where my voice,
My own voice, silly child!—was swelling
(O! how my spirit would rejoice,
And leap within me at the cry)
The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head
Unsheltered—and the heavy wind
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
It was but man, I thought, who shed
Laurels upon me: and the rush—
The torrent of the chilly air
Gurgled within my ear the crush
Of empires—with the captive’s prayer—
The hum of suitors—and the tone
Of flattery ’round a sovereign’s throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,
Usurped a tyranny which men
Have deemed since I have reached to power,
My innate nature—be it so:
But, father, there lived one who, then,
Then—in my boyhood—when their fire
Burned with a still intenser glow
(For passion must, with youth, expire)
E’en then who knew this iron heart
In woman’s weakness had a part.

I have no words—alas!—to tell
The loveliness of loving well!
Nor would I now attempt to trace
The more than beauty of a face
Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
Are—shadows on th’ unstable wind:
Thus I remember having dwelt
Some page of early lore upon,
With loitering eye, till I have felt
The letters—with their meaning—melt
To fantasies—with none.

O, she was worthy of all love!
Love as in infancy was mine—
’Twas such as angel minds above
Might envy; her young heart the shrine
On which my every hope and thought
Were incense—then a goodly gift,
For they were childish and upright—
Pure—as her young example taught:
Why did I leave it, and, adrift,
Trust to the fire within, for light?

We grew in age—and love—together—
Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather—
And, when the friendly sunshine smiled.
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven—but in her eyes.
Young Love’s first lesson is——the heart:
For ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,
When, from our little cares apart,
And laughing at her girlish wiles,
I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,
And pour my spirit out in tears—
There was no need to speak the rest—
No need to quiet any fears
Of her—who asked no reason why,
But turned on me her quiet eye!

Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove
When, on the mountain peak, alone,
Ambition lent it a new tone—
I had no being—but in thee:
The world, and all it did contain
In the earth—the air—the sea—
Its joy—its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure—the ideal,
Dim, vanities of dreams by night—
And dimmer nothings which were real—
(Shadows—and a more shadowy light!)
Parted upon their misty wings,
And, so, confusedly, became
Thine image and—a name—a name!
Two separate—yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious—have you known
The passion, father? You have not:
A cottager, I marked a throne
Of half the world as all my own,
And murmured at such lowly lot—
But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapor of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam
Of beauty which did while it thro’
The minute—the hour—the day—oppress
My mind with double loveliness.

We walked together on the crown
Of a high mountain which looked down
Afar from its proud natural towers
Of rock and forest, on the hills—
The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers
And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically—in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside
The moment’s converse; in her eyes
I read, perhaps too carelessly—
A mingled feeling with my own—
The flush on her bright cheek, to me
Seemed to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be
Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then,
And donned a visionary crown—
Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me—
But that, among the rabble—men,
Lion ambition is chained down—
And crouches to a keeper’s hand—
Not so in deserts where the grand—
The wild—the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look ’round thee now on Samarcand!—
Is she not queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling—her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne—
And who her sovereign? Timour—he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o’er empires haughtily
A diademed outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall’st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav’st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth—
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly—
And homeward turned his softened eye.
’Twas sunset: When the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev’ning mist
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, would fly,
But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What tho’ the moon—tho’ the white moon
Shed all the splendor of her noon,
Her smile is chilly—and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one—
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown—
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty—which is all.
I reached my home—my home no more—
For all had flown who made it so.
I passed from out its mossy door,
And, tho’ my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known—
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
An humbler heart—a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe—
I know—for Death who comes for me
From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar.
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro’ Eternity——
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path—
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,—
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt-offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellised rays from Heaven
No mote may shun—no tiniest fly—
The light’ning of his eagle eye—
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love’s very hair!

I yearn to exist in a space where the stars all but blaze
Where “stars” aren’t celebrities their plaster faces plastered
on magazine covers lining the shopping aisles
But where they bask in the night sky unpolluted
And exist radiantly

Where the culture ceases to revolve around
the newest latest fashion or video
And instead revolves around the ripening of figs
And the blooming of chrysanthemums
And the migrations of the swallows
Where we look like awestruck children
to those unpolluted stars above us
and this great earth around us
to tell the time and pass the seasons,
Living then in harmony with the revolution of the very soil and air
from which our life flows
It’s easy to forget

I crave an environment
that does not depend upon phone screens
Where my peers and myself do not walk through life
in an addicted daze
Unaware of the haze that descends as an effect
of such technological dependence
We are walking around with our eyes unconsciously searching
for the stimulus that society constantly feeds us
We are tripping over ourselves just trying to keep up
These electronic signals flashing upon thin panels of glass
And This is what we call Living

The dopamine flooding our brains
when that text vibration brings our popularity to attention
Capturing our attention holding it captive
We are prisoners of our own purchases
Stepping into voluntary chains
Producing our wrists for shackles
Rusting our humanity away enchained
in a web of unsocial media and notifications
We neglect to make space for our own existence
Disconnecting from our own physical experience
We don't even feel our fingers typing and swiping
Hoarding gluttonous over likes and comments and click bait headlines
Consumed by our own consummation  
We never have any silence

I yearn to exist in a space where our eyes like stars all but blaze
Awake with acute awareness of the present moment
Where we break shackles and push comfort zones
Basking in the raw beauty of an exuberant life we are conscious to experience
I yearn to exist together as radiant as the stars in the vastest galaxy

you will not like what
you will soon imbibe...

long has a single moot court team
infernal internal debated,
the if's and of's, among itself:

"To Read, Or Not To Read?"

in solitary confinement,
place one's self,
undisturbed but for stale bread,
but unpolluted water

letting only visions sprung internal
guide thy words and world,
from tongue to paper,
creating as pure as one can,
unperturbed by the
rocket's glare of another's poetry

risking all but certain knowing,
it is my fawlty fault alone,
no compare, all laid bare,
no infection of inflection,
no reflection of yours,
in mine mirrored image

my issued seed, entire genetic,
it's only inked environment what is
pre-seeded by blood and *****,
my eyes filter all sight by this light,
this lonely light alone

for the moment, when,
I bend my head to thy stream
to partake when inspiry is parched,
the knowledge that what you
write and wrought,
so much better
than my small portions,
I am condemned in perpetuity
not to the agony mot of defeat,
for I could not
cease to write,
any more than I could
cease to breathe,
or despair of all hope
for messianic better days

but, if to be burdened
by the too real title of
second best,
then my poems,
all sadness to be.

this I cannot have,
so let my pieces,
mediocre or even trash,
live peacefully unencumbered
by the site lines of the living
and the dead

thy finery exceeds my plain grasp,
when I read yours,
my self-pity self-suffocates,
and I ask,
nay, I beg of myself:

let my voice be still
but not stilled,
let my thoughts be boundless,
but not in thine clasped,
let my heart speak my truth,
even unto admitting my yellow courage,
let it not be disparaged by,
for my rank of commonality,
it's low caste author's curse

"for who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time"

I have read the best

once, I wrote
to laugh,
reminded and reminding,
they too feared,
the compare to those who
wrote before their own hour

now I know better,
my only solution,
let my additive, be uncomplicated
my images, uncompromised,
by that, my eyes have n'ere seen,
in languages unspoken, but yet believed,
that were given birth only
for a poet's needs

you may dispense
with my droppings,
as you please, but when
I read you and yours,
I am,
so dangerously pleasured,
my creativity,
my one true god and deity,
oft no longer speaks to me,
it's silence a death sentence
that no court, not in any land,
on earth or unheaven,
may e'er grant clemency,
that of course,
unkindest cut of all

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry"

"The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveler returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of"

You see, already cursed and contaminated,
All my sins italicized, except for my original one,
The imposition of mine own hand,
To dare to write and dream in line and meter, verse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


*To be, or not to be, that is the question—
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep—
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveler returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in all thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

A flourishing field of flowers strides across the teeming landscape
Weaving wind currents disperse fallen leaves; birds soar above the bellowing howls of Zephyr
The meadow is illuminated identical to the shining stars seen overhead
Such a place as this can’t be described merely in words

To understand the field, one must hear its echoing melody
Can you hear its blissful humming in the crisp night air?
Can you hear the birds serenading every dawn? Can you hear them whistling lullabies every dusk?
Can you hear Gaia’s song? So splendid, you not only hear it but can taste its saccharine stanzas?

To know the field, one must feel its warmth and bask in its radiance
Can you feel the firm grasp of the Sun's rays? Can you tell it won’t ever let go of you? Do you care?
Can you feel the field’s invigorating warmth enticing you?
Can you feel it take away your gloomy desolation? Can you feel it take away your stress and doubts?

To appreciate the field, one must see its abundant life
Can you see the trees growing in peace as they amass their armies yet carry no animosity and strife?
Can you see the pure, unpolluted streams that flow forever as if in a perpetual race against Father Time?
Can you see the Nightingale in her tree composing? Can you see the other as he anticipates her words?

To fathom the field’s perfection you must find it yourself. “Where is this field? Someone must know”
It’s in a place that must be found on your own. There’s only one place where it could begin to grow
The field lies where anyone can find it but it’s also a place where many will never find its mark
The paradise you seek can only be found deep in your heart, after you let Love cultivate the Dark

A man stands. overlooking two different visions. Two different choices.

On the left he gazed over the glorious modernized utopia. Tall prominent skyscrapers, gleaming in the dazzling pure sunlight. Clinical white rows of spacious suburbia. Unnaturally green gardens of perfectly shaped, perfectly cut square grass accompanying the houses. Polished, scentless people strolled down the un-littered perfection of the linear streets. Enormous great smiles featured on the faces of all. The urban paradise. Biblical, eden in practise, sanctity.  Economical bliss. Unpolluted, crime free, social perfection. No inequality, racism, no hatred only love among broters. No depression. The endless rows stretched glorious miles, convenience, supermarkets, brand new glistening, hospitals, all necessity in perfect working order. No unemployment, no political unrest. Every man among equals. Utopia.

On the right hand side, wretched poverty as far as the eye can see. Cramped, overwhelmed shanty towns. Terrified people, dragging themselves through diseased streets. Crippling illness plaguing the antagonized masses. There is no employment here, no glistening new buildings. Only the decaying festering ruins of lifetimes of selfishness. Hatred, jealousy, paranoia, neurotic fluttering harpy’s, harlequins of the night. Plagued minds, plagued bodies. Gargantuan monsters of men rose from the rubble. Demented. Lava flows freely through the crumbling streets. There are no trees here, no vegetation, only blackened earth. Blackened with the ****** despair of man. Only anguish in this land. The black sun burns with hateful rage in the sooty, cloudy toxic sky, the only rain falls as corpses falling from sardine cans to the sky. Burnt out cancerous lungs, filled with sulphurous air from the giant volcano's of dead minds, spewing deadly chemicals into the already uninhabitable environment. The demons of despair stalk this land, endlessly wallowing in there own self-loathing, amongst other vile things.

The decision resting on his shoulders governs life for all men, all men to come. His left side, yearning for paradise, freedom, equality for all, peace, communal gain.
His right side leaning towards narcissistic self gain. Taking the world for himself, watching alone the setting of the poisoned blck sun, poisoned by his greed.

He walked forward, leaving the realms of choice behind him. The future was his to choose.

Freedom
In the cold breeze
Perched high on the icy stone
Snow glazed lakes spanning for miles
I feel at home
At peace
This is my element
I could touch to tops of trees
And breath unpolluted air
Careful steps to prevent slipping
And falling prey to the beauty of nature
The danger
The peace
The passion
I love it all
I am home
At last

I would be a fool to compare
Your presence to that
Of a candle towering valiantly in a dark room,
Acting as a guide as some would say.
You would eventually burn out,
Leaving me alone with no sense of direction.

You are closer to a star
On an unpolluted night,
Making your way to me
No matter the distance.
And even though you may
Become sheathed at times,
Knowing you are always there
Brings me a sense of relief.

Christoúgenna parable: “from the third tusk that remained behind the underside of the Bedouin of the seventh dream, Mariah's nativity path is touched, hearing in the sieve ears of the dried fruit of the Achenium in the hemlock, near her mother Hanna who always tease the bird visions feeding Mariah's fertility. Hanna's progenitor slipped into the third parchment, being a fruit of infertile destiny not being a dried fruit, but rather of his lord that in a female a male will be born and that he will resurrect healing adjacent patients in the neo-testamentary and in his biblical canon, in seventy-three keys of the old testament that will be used to open a new crown ”. The Bedouin wrote with the drops of the sea that exuded from the compendium of Stella Maris, while this nomad brought them closer to a son in their fellow men and in the plurality of individuals, expanding on the announcement of an unborn son acclaimed Jesus.

They ran the lines of the nativity and in it would rest the arms of his father of Mariah; Yhoyaqim in memory of predecessor Imram as Hanna's father. He had wine for two in their wineskins, and in the nuptiality of carnality, for more siblings of a betrothal and of only one unpolluted and not carnal, full of Gratia Plena, as a factual verb in the Vulgate or Hebrew Bible for the purpose of whom He writes like Jerome of Stridon or just like a Bedouin with the tooth of a viper in a holy narrative of the matzo and its annunciation in its sixth month.

The Bedouin continues: “Mariah was born to engender the grace that nothing disturbs in the majesty of her heart…, it will take me a while to reach your nativity, but here I have to be before the reactions of going where my desires that cut through the impulsiveness of arriving now more than ever to Mariah's birth of the only child. Here in the foggy Judean night with the fathoms of the bush and stone substitutes, clay with mother-metal on the vegetable fibers that I carry in my donkeys. I will come to finish and rub the planks and crossbars that will support our new home in conifers of cypress and fir, up to the beams and balustrades of his coming. Cedar antisepsis and its aromatics will fill you up on arrival with cypress resin to caulk the Capernaum vessels that will ship you by the Aramaic word. Do not die waiting for me with the door open, where I will wash your feet with the gold of Ophir, which on the laden ***** of my donkeys I will carry natron to whiten the fabrics of its dressing, among any scented and refined lyes of light. With beryl, topaz, and ruby I will also seal the footsteps that reach her as far as her mother Hanna, I will continue to happen among the mystery of Simún that includes me in her life project, I am Imram, Hanna's father, and grandfather of this precious gem, who between acts they stand in the concession of his body-soul and mother-son as a venerable spirit, as anticipation more than a life of pain, joy, and martyrdom, piercing the soul to whoever disintegrates the desert of silica with blood in the prophecies of Simeon "

While the immaculate is adorned with flowers and oracles of ovation, Imram's shepherding bequeaths us in the vicinity of Nazareth, in all things that have their order and more than others must be prescribed for the births of those who fly the spiritual cities, which in itself brings us with its placenta. Mariah in her nature constitutes the first fractal of light of the One-Dimensional Beams, where she is born doubly into a body of peace and a prized winged spirit. Knowing that her sacred breaths do not become full or in twentieth dawn of the topaz nor less of the ruby, in which no sunset dies of all the venerable benefits that are born with God, nor before the visit to her cousin Elizabeth and in her Magnificat, nor less in a resentment in twelve years of his son already put on a tree, from the very dialogues of a son with a father, leaving them as patriarchs, before the convenience of engaging in the tasks of his father, being the son of his chosen Mariah, and that in the womb of his mother Hanna there was no one to whom it would not be, not even when his son Jesus told him in units of his father that he did not understand, in the naivety of the flesh made of the divine verb and in the existence of the mediate mystery.

The Bedouin continues: “as gospel, I have transcended my paternity beyond the ministry of the relief of virginity of the maternal conscience of a divine son, but of resolution of the word from mother to son, still not understanding him…, but speaking for generations that they will never remove the word of God and his mystery from my soul. I will always be a Bedouin of Galilee, as in the amount of Simún and in the values of the disciples who are also my children of the fertility of a woman in all living beings, as a family line that is born from the ruins of Eve, to be reborn in the beginning of the clamorous genesis of Mariah "

Imram, visibly exhausted, traveled in the row of Simún, which was endowed with a being that creator of everything, as a spirit that engenders family love to reunite them at the nativity of his descendant, always with the existence that embodies the infinite ***** of the star. that skewed and guided him, taking out the entrails of the universe that did not fit in the world, to lead them in the exploits of an orthodox nihilism, to protect with their heralds and sustain them from such motherhood, in the de facto conception and mother-granddaughter, preceded by the archangels who guard everything until their appendages are lost in the confines that have no consummation. Before the holy dormancy of the fire of love, ramshackle yielded by the rosary and the Simun, where promontory praises are noticed about the good adventure of a perennial nativity, from those hours that continue to be subjects for the times of time as the immortal reign of the centuries, and the apostolates sponsoring their worthy catechesis in their filial course, from reverend mother in evident assumption taking him away from his sufferings.

Imram continues: “Wine for servants and kings, in a chalice for one, in a family that does not skimp on glasses to include, for more brothers to offer to have them closer than writing with other literary legions warned, rather alive in canon lines from the bible, in perpetuity as an existential ****** of an advent community, which is nothing more than a Christmas sermon, for it came in two being born into a mother and child, in the seventh dream and in its Christmas tirade. I will run closer to where I will be able to fall outside the walls of his holy house, to bring him all my offerings, for a very purified mother, who smells of roses and lilies adorning herself with cousin gifts from God, in the dispute of venerating him without time or saves opportune works of formerly bad deeds, but because of an urgent visit that I compensate at the end of intention and murmur, like his Messiah, only twelve years old, rising from the cliffs and also from the Apsid, avoiding the discursive center in the masses of his assumption, lining traces and returns from a crown like a dying star king, with a fearful stain in the vicinity of perihelion and as proximity to its orbital of Faith. "

His aphelion is more distant from a greater lost lot, always luminous in the night to reach the lap of the nativity of Nazareth, in an eternal dream that makes us be welcomed and transfigured by Mariah, in cosmopolitan frequency, in the liberations from herself. apotheosis, and those that deprivatize the internal idylls of a son and his wasted mother, only leaving us in the middle of a desert and their gifts separated, between points where it is intended to arrive by offering the doctrine in its sacramental figure, and manifesting its supernatural presence in melted nascent sheets and eternity that flees down from its equivalent marquee, becoming carved from the One-dimensional Beams..., being first-born, mother and multi-believer in the same hope and in the halo of Holiness of John within his wood and within his Nazarene halo.

A child is our ancient world's greatest gift.
So ignorant to ignorance they drift
through life, not seeing why we war or how
we hate the heartbeat of our life, but now
we try to stifle 'childish fantasy',
not seeing peace on Earth as they can see.

A child can make an instant, lifelong friend,
a common name or age will make them spend
their years together, joined at hip and heart,
each whispered secret promising the start
of stronger bonds and brighter days,
each hand in hand, traversing life's black maze.

A child may fight you over something small,
they kick and scream and bite and swipe, but all
their conflicts can be solved with one embrace,
forgiveness instant, smiles now back in place.
No secret sourness stored within their soul,
all faults forgotten; friendships, morals whole.

A child will speak with honesty profound;
the truths they speak to you are not yet bound
by pressures of society to lie
to save themselves - the words they speak will fly
through clouds of foggy falsehoods, set you free,
and open up your eyes to let you see
     just what you are, and what you've done,
and what monstrosity you could become
if you insist on murdering their world,
for it is worth its fragile weight in gold.
Ironically, materialism tries
to **** their tender, unpolluted lives:

"It's time that you grew up. You're not a child.
Don't let these frightful fancies grow so wild.
You've got to get a job and earn
your own money, quite soon you'll learn
the adult world is not so nice; no second chance,
so wake up from this stupid, silly trance.
     No time to idly sit and daydream dear.
It's time we got this situation clear:
a life of student loans and debts await.
Your choices now affect your life-long fate.
Bad grades, you say? Well, that's so awfully sad.
But don't expect our help. You'll only add
     to costs it takes to get you lot in work.
Although, those grades will only make this worse.
Who wants to hire a failure? No one does.
So get it right first time, my pet, because
you'll be ignored and shunned and judged, although
we'll masquerade, and claim we care or know."

But what if I don't want to choose this way?
I've got a voice, but you won't hear me say
that I don't want to live my life like this.
The future you have carved for me, your bliss,
is hell for me. Why can't you realise?
This world looks better through a child's eyes.

Love’s Lexicon
 
I must make a new vocabulary.
My dear, the words I’ve used in those
Over and over descriptions, signifying all you are,
Are well and past their sell-by-date, should
End their shelf-life here and now. No longer can I
Form their letters truly without knowing well
I test love’s patience . . . and your own.
 
So in desperation’s way
I adopt a different lexicon
Offer you, my love,
a fresh taxonomy.
 
concave the slapp
pressure inbuilt
evenly glassed
held held holdingnow
but ambulatory
moons at full stretch
figuration tempering
notonce twicemore
pressure wieghedupon
beyond breath’s exhale
membraneous goldening
frecklation the hands’ fastness
eyerich sightedkeen here
gone awaygone away
bodystretched senticle
smoooth
  
A Proper Poem
 
Poised to conjure music
from the nothing air, and
with only some frivolous
verse to guide me,
I rest momentarily
to watch the screen of my mind
show your dear self to me:
the sweet flow of your body
uncovered in the shower;
that dance of choosing clothes
and dressing. I have sometimes
watched and wondered,
wondered that you could be
quite as you are.
So precious in my sight,
so very precious.

Water’s Kiss**
 
I shall only write you
very short poems of love
so you can taste them
in one gulp as you might
from a Highland stream
unpolluted, soft,
peat -filtered, cold,
and bubbled with air
from falling across stones
into your cupped hand.
My love, bring now
this water’s kiss
to your waiting lips.

I yearn to exist in a space where the stars all but blaze
Where stars aren't celebrities
Where they bask in the night sky unpolluted
And just exist
I crave truly being in an environment that does not depend upon phone screens
Where my peers and myself do not walk through life in an addicted daze
Unaware of the haze that descends as an effect of such technological dependence
We are walking around with our eyes unconsciously searching for the stimulus that society constantly feeds us
These electronic signals flashing upon thin panels of glass
And This is what we call Living
The dopamine flooding our brain when that text vibration brings our popularity to attention
Capturing our attention holding it captive
We are prisoners of our own purchases
Rusting our humanity away enchained
In a web of unsocial media and notifications
We never have any silence

When was the last time you just sat silent doing nothing

When was the last time you allowed your mind even a sliver of space to just exist

War & Peace

After the war in Norway and the German army left, income
and employment they had brought such as building
roads and airports disappeared.
It was a time when my brother and I stole coal from the train
depot’s supply, potatoes and other root vegetable were    
and the fish in an unpolluted water was plentiful.

We were caught by the police they let me go because I looked
small and innocent. My brother was sent to a youth correction
centre for two years- it still makes me angry thinking of it-
peace had done us no favours.

My mother was doing two newspaper rounds my sister and I
helped her, the morning round was the worst, Norway is a
cold country it was me who found the dead man he had frozen
to death, drunk and falling asleep in a snow drift.

I’m sitting here as an elderly man remembering the old days
and “not good old days” we had each other and family love.
I sit here ancient man with house, car and a modest success,
oh, my why wouldn’t I give to feel the love again, but they
have gone now- all of them- and I’m the only link to our past.

Quiet little One...
No longer must you cling
To those clamouring,
Corrosive thoughts of old.
Accept that We Were
All born yesterday.
And again today...
And in every passing hour.
So even Now,
Our spirit pulsing with the Moment.
Breathe as the sky breathes...
One continuous sigh of Completion.
A subtle forward motion;
Effortless, attentive,
Unpolluted in contentment.
Arm yourself with joy,
Infinitely beguiled by life,
This plethora of blessings;
Never ceasing to revel in a Common state of wonder.
Your awkward smile,
Your broken shine,
Your gentle sorrows;
They light the candle
Of your eye; becoming
Amplifiers of your beauty...
Sparkling rays of laughter,
Tossed like tinsel,
Across each heartfelt Conversation.
Waken to the embrace of
Human error;
For both Comedy and Tragedy
Are remedies we share.

A rumbling,
Echoes across the shattered wasteland
Acid snow drifts in the caustic air
Past my helmet visor.

My gas filter rattles
As I **** in the foul air,
The next wave is coming
Great war machines,
Chugging slowly toward our battered dugouts.

And for what?
A body of unpolluted water
Barely wide enough to step over,
Or a tiny stretch of untainted farmland.

I sit in my ramshackle bunker
With my comrades,
Checking my rifle one last time,
Knowing in my heart, that we
Can't push back the next assault.

I sit silently cursing my ancestors,
For leaving me this god-forsaken legacy
For shattering my Earth.

As the first shells start to fall.

From deep within the light is born
From deep within comes a brand new dawn
Authentic and unpolluted by thought
Far away from the traditions that man has taught
When the whole world breathes in synchronization
To become one breath
Merged with all of creation
Illuminated like the evening star
Shining bright from afar
Darkness causes the light to exist
In balanced contrast are the keys on a piano played with great bliss
The ebony and ivory creates a melody
Your life song of harmony
Where Love is a top priority
Sprung forth from the Falun Gong philosophy

I'm sorry this ever happened to you.
I'm sorry you were just an 8 year old, so full of life and you didn't deserve this pain.
I'm sorry those pedophilic pigs preyed on your innocence.
I'm sorry you were born in India- a country powered by people, pioneered by strong men of principles but still feel powerless to protect its own people.
I'm sorry our laws are enforced to protect the lawless.
I'm sorry there is a *****, so possessed by religion out there who passed a mean comment on you.
I'm sorry there are countless many who favors his opinion strongly.
I'm sorry none of us could protect you or bring you back to life.
I'm sorry that I can only hope hell does exist and those men do rot in its deepest pits.
I'm sorry all of us can only sympathize and none of us can empathize.
I'm sorry I have no voice of my own.
I'm sorry my child, I truly am because you were born a girl.
I'm sorry to say how lucky I feel to be alive, that my sister or mother or friends are unpolluted and still breathing just fine.
I'm sorry this poem is pointless as the many hashtags that come and go after each **** but I had to write this for my own peace of mind.
I'm sorry as I can only sit back and pray there won't be anymore Asifas.

London, 1999

Oh the fences they hold true,
wandering through heavy woven forests of tree roots
to pastures of sunken vegetation
along dirt roads nestled in overcast shadows,
as a family picnics, or so it would appear.
A rejoice of sorts if only you were still here.
I see your silhouette appear and reappear,
the wind etching your likeness
upon each cairn that dots pastoral.

The walking path becomes overwhelmed by sunlight.
Perhaps you are still working in the fields,
Your wind-burned and calloused exterior
holding rough rooted abhorrence in your lowered brow.
You remain sanctified and unpolluted,
piling sun bleached stone upon sunken roots,
the dark shadows solidified in foreground fate.

Oh how your canvas womb gives heartless birth.
Thrice mangled memories,
of dark French roast in an earth tone demitasse
and crumpets served slightly charred on the veranda
on a chipped porcelain Victorian saucer
with only a faint shade of lavender along its edge.

As the dark brown stain in the once white silk tablecloth
glowers through the prongs of your tarnished silver fork,
You stare across the table
at the emptiness of the once filled bookcases.

I realize that your only genuine notion of remorse
is in the severed piece of an antique plate.

There sitting at the kitchen table
not knowing what time it is
Suddenly surprised by an unrecognized voice,
that of a young boy
an age of eleven or twelve, I presume.
I stand up quickly and walk to the sink,
The boy's voice loudly and confidently projected
through that of a microphone.

His love of God I hear in his call, His love of God I hear in his voice,
His desire to do something good I hear from his soul.

His fitra (nature) unpolluted by the evil, by the gimmicks of an unruly environment.

His innocence I listen to. His innocence and sincere faith in God. His love of God making me cry.
The most beautiful recitation of the Adhan (the call to prayer) by a youngster I have ever heard.
His parents, a parent, or another elder likely having brought him here.

The boy's call called me to my responsibility, to my duty.
A very good thing the adult brothers letting a young boy call the Adhan.

I want to meet this boy. I wish to know his name. Who is he? I want to find him. If I do, I'll tell him, You did a fantastic job. God is proud of you. I think you're near to Him.

I cry now thinking of another young boy who doesn't call the Adhan because he doesn't know how. He hasn't been taught how. He hasn't been taught how by his parents. He hasn't been taught how by the community. He hasn't been taught how by his school.

I cry but not long because like the young boy reciting the Adhan or calling us to prayer, the other young boy who doesn't know how to belongs to God and is in His good care and God the Most Just, the Most Loving takes the best care of all of His belongings.

I cry but not long because the young boy's Adhan or call called me to or reminded me of my responsibility to the other young boy and to another young boy.

Forefathers shedding blood
In a spectacular
Bravery and unity
Heralded
"A violated-not sovereignty
And self confidence"
For posterity!
What is more
An unpolluted culture
And intact identity!

Thus, maintaining integrity
And hard-preserved identity
Getting poverty and lack
Behind our back,
For the coming generation
We have to pave the track
With Mega projects  Like
--GERD--
So that on a bright tomorrow
Our children embark!

I wish
I could cut myself off
From the commotion in the world.
Find
A door, portal, or some outlet
Which would take me to a state of
Tranquility;
A place were I could lay my body down
And not feel
The slightest twinge of pain...
FEEL
Unpolluted
Unailed.

I live in an iconic space
devoid of all sound and voice
seeking an inner temple
where resides small fragments of an old self
a journey once taken
a heart once innocent and plain
unpolluted and clean childlike
metaphysical being with no wants, simple needs
no columns of materialism
a nihilistic existence.

It exists no more
as days merged into the nights
and the light of the next day bought with it
a slow and invasive society
that rendered me numb and meaningless.

I am now awash in a rapidly filling vessel
that needs to be better than I ever was
and all too soon the walls
build greater  heights and gates of enormous size
allowing no free access to no one.

I was now held a prisoner in my own  cemetery
casting about to shake out this network
of social chains  that hold me captive.

Where is the God I once spoke to directly?
Where are the angels that I knew existed?
Why did Santa Claus become commercial?
How did brother get to **** brother
and who created gigantic religious dogma
to herd people into cages of conversion?

Please set me free from this new society
and allow me to return home
to my once beautiful emptiness!
Please, please!

Author Notes

Contemplation-6.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago

- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11624947-I-live-in-an-iconic-space...-by-Marshall-Gass-noguest#st­hash.4Vp6DbuR.dpuf

the world was good
light shown through the dark void
waters parted to reveal dry land
Flora and Faunus presided
over primordial paradise
the green earth breathed crisp
cerulean skies
stars twinkled laser-like
through the unpolluted vastness
and every month a dragon
swallowed the moon
lions and lambs played peacefully
roses bloomed in deserts
rivers and oceans teemed
with every kind of cat and dog fish
buffalo roamed by the millions
and chickens came before eggs
nightingales sang songs
with humpbacks
butterflies flapped their wings
without consequence
the earth was new
the garden was fresh
then God created man

Unchallenged beauty
Beauty unchanged
Perfectly balanced beauty
Eyes remain engaged


Undisputed beauty
I lost words for your praise
Unpolluted beauty
You're ineffable in one phrase


You still seem impeccable in your flawed days
You're above the beauties
My stone heart says

There sitting at the kitchen table
not knowing what time it is
Suddenly surprised by an unrecognized voice,
that of a young boy
an age of eleven or twelve, I presume.
I stand up quickly and walk to the sink,
The boy's voice loudly and confidently projected
through that of a microphone.

His love of God I hear in his call, His love of God I hear in his voice,
His desire to do something good I hear from his soul.

His fitra (nature) unpolluted by the evil, by the gimmicks of an unruly environment.
His innocence I listen to. His innocence and sincere faith in God. His love of God making me cry.
The most beautiful recitation of the Adhan (the call to prayer) by a youngster I have ever heard.
His parents, a parent, or another elder likely having brought him here.

The boy's call called me to my responsibility, to my duty.
A very good thing the adult brothers letting a young boy call the Adhan.

I want to meet this boy. I wish to know his name. Who is he? I want to find him. If I do, I'll tell him, You did a fantastic job. God is proud of you. I think you're near to Him.

I cry now thinking of another young boy who doesn't call the Adhan because he doesn't know how. He hasn't been taught how. He hasn't been taught how by his parents. He hasn't been taught how by the community. He hasn't been taught how by his school.

I cry but not long because like the young boy reciting the Adhan or calling us to prayer, the other young boy who doesn't know how to belongs to God and is in His good care and God the Most Just, the Most Loving takes the best care of all of His belongings.

I cry but not long because the young boy's Adhan or call called me to or reminded me of my responsibility to the other young boy and to another young boy.