O, for that warning voice, which he, who saw
The Apocalypse, heard cry in Heaven aloud,
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
Woe to the inhabitants on earth! that now,
While time was, our first parents had been warned
The coming of their secret foe, and ’scaped,
Haply so ’scaped his mortal snare:  For now
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
The tempter ere the accuser of mankind,
To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss
Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell:
Yet, not rejoicing in his speed, though bold
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,
Begins his dire attempt; which nigh the birth
Now rolling boils in his tumultuous breast,
And like a devilish engine back recoils
Upon himself; horrour and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place:  Now conscience wakes despair,
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven, and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began.
O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
Of Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring in Heaven against Heaven’s matchless King:
Ah, wherefore! he deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high
I sdeined subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome still paying, still to owe,
Forgetful what from him I still received,
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged; what burden then
O, had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferiour Angel, I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition!  Yet why not some other Power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part; but other Powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But Heaven’s free love dealt equally to all?
Be then his love accursed, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.
Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
O, then, at last relent:  Is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent.  Ay me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of Hell.
With diadem and scepter high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery:  Such joy ambition finds.
But say I could repent, and could obtain,
By act of grace, my former state; how soon
Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore?  Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow,
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall:  so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging, peace;
All hope excluded thus, behold, in stead
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So farewell, hope; and with hope farewell, fear;
Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As Man ere long, and this new world, shall know.
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face
Thrice changed with pale, ire, envy, and despair;
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld.
For heavenly minds from such distempers foul
Are ever clear.  Whereof he soon aware,
Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm,
Artificer of fraud; and was the first
That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge:
Yet not enough had practised to deceive
Uriel once warned; whose eye pursued him down
The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount
Saw him disfigured, more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort; his gestures fierce
He marked and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
Access denied; and overhead upgrew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend,
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise upsprung;                        

Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed:
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed
That landskip:  And of pure now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair:  Now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils.  As when to them who fail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambick, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles:
So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend,
Who came their bane; though with them better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
Of Tobit’s son, and with a vengeance sent
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill
Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;
But further way found none, so thick entwined,
As one continued brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed
All path of man or beast that passed that way.
One gate there only was, and that looked east
On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw,
Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt,
At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within
Lights on his feet.  As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o’er the fence with ease into the fold:
Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o’er the tiles:
So clomb this first grand thief into God’s fold;
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life
Thereby regained, but sat devising death
To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant, but only used
For prospect, what well used had been the pledge
Of immortality.  So little knows
Any, but God alone, to value right
The good before him, but perverts best things
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.
Beneath him with new wonder now he views,
To all delight of human sense exposed,
In narrow room, Nature’s whole wealth, yea more,
A Heaven on Earth:  For blissful Paradise
Of God the garden was, by him in the east
Of Eden planted; Eden stretched her line
From Auran eastward to the royal towers
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings,
Of where the sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telassar:  In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained;
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the tree of life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,
Our death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden-mould high raised
Upon the rapid current, which, through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if Art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy errour under pendant shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers:  Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm,
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall
Down the ***** hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirrour holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.  Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea’s eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise under the Ethiop line
By Nilus’ head, enclosed with shining rock,
A whole day’s journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend
Saw, undelighted, all delight, all kind
Of living creatures, new to sight, and strange
Two of far nobler shape, ***** and tall,
Godlike *****, with native honour clad
In naked majesty seemed lords of all:
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,
(Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,)
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their *** not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed;
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him:
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed;
Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame
Of nature’s works, honour dishonourable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banished from man’s life his happiest life,
Simplicity and spotless innocence!
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight
Of God or Angel; for they thought no ill:
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair,
That ever since in love’s embraces met;
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain side
They sat them down; and, after no more toil
Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed
To recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell,
Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs
Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline
On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers:
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind,
Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream;
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems
Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league,
Alone as they.  About them frisking played
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
In wood or wilderness, forest or den;
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His?kithetmroboscis; close the serpent sly,
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
His braided train, and of his fatal guile
Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass
Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat,
Or bedward ruminating; for the sun,
Declined, was hasting now with prone career
To the ocean isles, and in the ascending scale
Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose:
When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood,
Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad.
O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold!
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps,
Not Spirits, yet to heavenly Spirits bright
Little inferiour; whom my thoughts pursue

Once more-I am condemned to t'is unmentionable solitude;
And so is my grief-my grief t'at hath been passionately seducing me-of late;
And neither clear dusks, nor vivid twilight, hath helped ease out my mind's servitude;
Even strokes of civil light-to whom I submitteth my visions; on whom I may rest my fate.

Ah, he who was once immortal-and still is,
His suffering is mine-and thus as reeking of malice,
He, who hath the tenderest of charms, and lips;
He, whom my heart abides by, and chooses to keep.

But his whereabouts hath been unknown, and a lie to my whole passage;
Still whenever I roamed yon outside region, he was nowhere within my sight;
He who hath been both sincerity and a malice in his own timeless age;
He who hath been indulged by my morns, and cooed to, by my night's impatient moonlight.

Ah, how canst he be but so unfair?
He left my poetry to myself, within t'is mistaken five-wheeled chair;
I am now anxious, strangely; about my own wealth of poetic torrents;
My mind feels humid, but itself hath been ferociously abused-like the mind of a fiend.

And to him my suffering is dear-for to its shrieks he showeth but contempt;
He laughs at it and locks it away in its misery-with not one drop of shame;
Ah, he is too impulsive to think of farther, and far too lame;
He is too wild-and darkly scented like night; but as well evil, and too slippery, to blame.

Thus I am but pain, and the whole world next to me is fear;
I knoweth I should drifteth away, but my ears, and insides-insisteth on staying here;
As if the crude, lying love were truthful-and easefully sitting near;
And couldst promise to cause me no more tears.

And thinking of thee sheds only more unwanted blood;
And t'is indeed, remains something I wanteth not;
For of which hath been spilled too much, and which hath torn away my heart;
For I shall not any more saint thee; and removeth thee from any further crafted story plot.

And so thou art not to be any farther painted;
For thou hath left any beauty abandoned, and too simperingly hesitated;
Thou made me feel betrayed, and teased my whole, productive solitudes;
Thou sent my glittering heart still; thou faltered my dignity-and more severely, more glorious youth.

Thou tampered with me like thou shalt doth an old proverb;
For thou detestest any poetry; and cursest any defining melodies, or verbs;
Thou tantalized my verses, but mercilessly flew and ran away;
Thou vanished my glimmering worlds; and harmed my cheery authorial days.

And thy accusations of me hath but been too vehement;
Like thou thyself owneth over me a verdurous tyranny;
Thou hath been too proud, whenst thou hath only but a grievous impediment;
And her, who was darkly born as a devil; and in whom there is neither desire, nor humanity.

And like her yesterday, thou art now too proud, and befalleth my private senses of humanity;
As she desired, thou hath now grown selfish, and tender not like before;
Sadly all t'is thou realiseth not, and instead taketh easily as mere profound felicity;
And thy passion hath likewise gone, 'till t'is saddened world ends, and existeth no more.

I am here all madness-madness t'at to its impertinent soul-is brilliant;
Brilliant to t'ose who are blind to feelings, just like his deaf soul perhaps is;
But madness, still I regard-as although infamy, deeply pleasant;
For it shall lead t'is ignored poetry to satisfaction, and widening secret bliss.

But either there is love or not love, shall I respect and be loyal to poetry;
Even though thou chooseth to follow her and forget our whole, significant glory;
I shall keepeth silent, and still be thankful for my taste-and untainted virginity;
I shall be proud of my true doings, and my equanimious love, for thee.

And my love shan't ever be bought at any price, nor even priceless syllable;
As well my triumphant words-for to them, aside from loyalty, nothing more is desirable;
For I believeth rewards are only for them who reserveth, and professeth, loyalty;
And for in every endurance there are charms, and even more agreeable, royalty.

And shalt never ever thou findeth my purity, and love, be tiresomely divided;
For my love is secure, and shall love its beloved all devotedly, and unaided;
My love, as reflected by poetry, is abundant, though sometimes childish-and even soundless;
But still terrific as rainbow, though more silent and tuneless; as one symbol of my loyalty, and truthfulness.

And accordingly, somehow, amongst thy invisibility-I senseth thee still, amongst yon verified air;
Of whose whims I am not afraid; of whose ill threats I was not once scared.
For t'is solitude, and its due poetry I hath undergone-hath deeply had my finest self purified;
For it hath been my friend-and indeed not thee; sadly not thee, for thou thyself hath chosen to be far, and left unspecified.

Like all of those beings, perhaps thou art the one also too silly;
For to love thou stayeth idle, and bothereth not to ever look at-for fear of purifying thy glory;
Thou art still one 'mongst 'em, who claimeth love is no higher than gold;
And thus deserving of me not-for as thou saith-love is trivial, and its seclusion canst be sold.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull ****** to the drains
    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
    But being too happy in thine happiness,--
        That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
            In some melodious plot
    Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
        Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
    Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
    Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
        With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
            And purple-stained mouth;
    That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
        And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
    What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
    Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
    Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
        Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
            And leaden-eyed despairs,
    Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
        Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
    Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
    Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
    And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
        Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
            But here there is no light,
    Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
        Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
    Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
        Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
            And mid-May's eldest child,
    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
        The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
        Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
            In such an ecstasy!
    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
          To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
    No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
    In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
        She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
            The same that oft-times hath
    Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
        Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
    To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
    As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
    Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
        Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
            In the next valley-glades:
    Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
        Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?

Ghosts hide behind her eyes
Joyfully burning in violet flames
They make her chest quake
And her hips shimmy-shake
As she tosses and turns in her sleep

In the morning she bursts into the daylight
Fleeing the urgent shadows of the night
And spins into the wind
Which dances around her body
And wishes it weren’t invisible
As it glides across her skin

She wallows amidst the verdurous grass
Bathing in the eager warmth of the sun
That permeates her sheath of clothes
To the soft shimmer of flesh underneath
Her dark curtain of lashes flutters then closes
As she breathes deeply while her mind floats elsewhere

She dreams of lace around her wrists and
Rubies falling from her fingertips
She wears a mollifying grin
On her tender strawberry lips
Surrendering to the rapture within

The earth splits open
It craves to reclaim her
In all her ripe and resplendent glory
Her fingers curl themselves in the dirt

Violet eyes fly open
A fierce gnawing hunger
Has been ignited in the pit of her belly
There is a pomegranate tree in the distance
Its branches heavy and voluptuous with fruit
On lithe legs she dashes to the tree
Plucking one gently from its cradle

Once broken open
Its swollen vermilion seeds gush forth
To fall about her feet
With a sigh she bites into the milky white meat
Sticky sweet juice cascades past her lips
And along the curve of her throat to tinge the skin pink
She is filled to the brim
Inflamed and engorged

She blushes
And lets the ravished pomegranate tumble to the ground
There is laughter on the wind

Protected by your existence like a canopy of green,
Shielded from the relentlessness of the driving sun,
I pass alone in this wood,
My own existence of no consequence to you.

My verdurous being, a revered reflection of yours,
Purposefully strides through this untrodden thicket.
A determined will is mine,
Emboldened by the prominence of your own stature.

Yours is a mettle tested by the summer tempest,
Cultivated in the rich soil of the ancient detritus -
An earned eminence,
Beyond the grasps of many adoring hands.

Reaching is just a feeble attempt at an earthly yearning;
Your presence in my mind is a more satisfying ownership.
It is what you are that I own,
Taken away only by being untrue to yourself.

Angel form of angel bells
Knell to the springtime of our love
Forebear to the summer heat ensue
Requite endure of somas delight
Feracious profundity verdurous express
The unct of skin and alls impress
From angels hearth of arch and tecture
I speak to you of perfecture
For if this bodies embrace wrapped in skin
Holds a heart that's true
Then let me see form of your face
And be with our love due

Nonpareil love:

My love for her lavishes on me every moment,
but my longing of reciprocation of love resided in me only for a stint of time,
As I would be the last person on the planet that she wants to love or reply,
She remembers me only when she forgets everything,
I am glad that I exist at her boredom.....
At least she would fill her moments of ennui with one-word replies for me,
Her reply is oft rare,
and the rare is rapacious,
But my unremitting love never ceases to fantasize her replies,
Only to sentient one-word replies or blank replies with the awaiting eyes, schizophrenic mind and destitute sound,
And this sheer life is to her to resonant with her stoic silence,
It takes one lifetime to understand and love someone completely...
So let me disintegrate from this life only after understanding her silence and
only after my love transcends into eternity,
and only after when my love sprawls into her silence,
Even her one word replies rove me rapturously rattling into the rustic mountains of verdurous life and ravine rocks....

I don't eat no beef
No **** no lamb no swine
Only on the verdurous etch
Doest I within my thine I dine

I don't eat Jellie and sauces slick with ill
Confounded with animal ****

Nor powders and honeys dripping and grime
Spent with the wretch of genocide's time

I don't hunt for game or trophy ****
I don't glorify **** or bile or swill

I don't bow to the customs and conventions of now
Now matter what serve of the demonic a sow

I don't **** my brother or sister for food
It's not blood on my hands that's reddened and hued
So why take the life of an innocent babe?
An animal born here of terrestrial habe?
What for the taste of delicious a flesh?
To accompany sauce Cantonese wan szech?
Or is it to sate gastronomy?
That bloodies the hands of you and me?
That forces the carnivore?
To act the ****** *****?
And ***** an animal innocent and bright
Is this self deified act requite?
What do you proclaim to be?
To ****** an animal's right to be?
A god with insight and power so great?
To forsake your right to heaven with hate?
Or a devil or demon anon?
To justify your sleepy murderous throng?
Or merely a human who follows the lead?
Of our common culture's bane banal creed?
So what is it that drives you to the deed exact?
To cut the throat of creatures in act?
Are you saying that murders ok?
And you'd enact this upon your own whether or may?
If you could knock or whack a human for merely the taste of its flesh?
And not because their discord did not mesh?
With your idea of what justifies life?
And end a being forever of strife?
Is it ok for aliens to prey?
Upon our earthen developments stay?
And enslave our species to sate their gut?
To fawn and feed and slupper and glut?
Because they have a higher IQ?
Or more dextrous fingers with which to hew?
Are you sure you want to be an unthinking one?
Of the masses maraud and to the deed done?
As somnambulist reaching with a laden gun
And end life forthwith no winner or won
Unless you count dinner to the taste of your tongue
Trained since a child to sing the song sung
Of the glory of meat as to salivate and savour
As if bowing to the idea of what will crave ya
Haven't you ever heard of an acquired taste?
Well couldn't we now apply this with grace?

CHANGES

.....”and if the elevator breaks down,
go crazy!”
--Prince, from “Purple Rain”
~~~~~
Is it possible to
hear the rain whisper
to the forest
as it falls between
thirsty trees;
as it converses
dark oboe concertos
with musky,
leaf cluttered earth?
Or to follow
water’s cycle
from the calmness
of the hurricane’s eye,
seeking each molecule
as it links with
oxygen green skies?
~~~~~
Impossible?
But, these random acts,
riotous developments,
are common place,
hum drum, every day
rainbow dreaming
compared to the
possibilities of human
creativity
interactions
and conscious probabilities,
of touching inside
subatomic flows,or standing beside
Jupiter’s cyclops eye
as it penetrates into the soul of
a wicked Miles Be-Bop note
exploding the myth of
humanities inhumanity!
~~~~~
****!
Genghis Khan,
Attila the ***
were angels
gleefully dancing
on the head of a pin
compared to the atrocities of
“human nature” fables
of “selfish genes”,
“bell curves”,
Broca’s brains,
or some god fed, bred
morality of “original sin”,
and “semper fidelis”.
Even Alexander,
slaughtering only hundreds of thousands
in his conquests
built libraries and
stood “enlightened”
compared to today
“****’em all, let God
sort it all out” mentality;
or a more accepted version,
“why, some of my best friends are...”
~~~~~
Have you ever dreamed
a different reality?
Of feeling the wind
in a Van Gogh wheat field?
Or, flying on his “Starry Night” beauty?
Have you ever hoped of being a “Centennial Person”?
Human,
not the robot
powerless automaton
making a handful prosper
while we bleed
nuts and bolts of
everything for a price,
everything for sale.
While for most, we need
need, just to live.
And they say
I am insane
crazy
out of my mind!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!
Excuse me as I laugh
in your face,
as I look to create a place
to take off my hat
relax, and call home.
Like the black Panther,
Quetzal, or Leopard
I too seek the musky
earth and canopy
of verdurous rain forests;
to bath in crystal,
sun reflecting mists
of mile high water falls;
to drink from mineral rich
mountain streams.
~~~~~
Like sister Elephants
raising their new generations,
discussing the re-emergence of Kalahari
after a Spring thunder storm,
I seek the unfettered
creativity
collectively
voluntary comradery
of human minds
working for the common good,
sharing in the common efforts
of a world made better
as future generations
discuss blue green
oceans where we all
first emerged so many
millennium ago.
~~~~~
I am ready,
still fairly young.
Proletarian sisters, brothers
hand me a gun,
hurry cause
I can see the
Revolutionary People’s Army
storming old
**** encrusted
bourgeois citadels.
What force can stop us?
We are the mountain wind
sweeping down
thru valleys,
over plains.
We are irrepressible,
irresistible.
We have a world to win.

Aztec Warrior 10.4.15

Because the latest messenger has gone,
my pale collections and delivered notes
are scattered everywhere – in trays,
in Cambridge cups and silver-rooms.
(Sticklebacks nest in my larger spoons.)
I am myself a fisher of sorts
and I fish green pike in redundant moats;
occasionally, I am owl of tombs,
a donkey’s back or half a goat’s,
and I call each flower Katharine
by desperate day and night.
I am waking germ in a field of blight
and a heart of heaping sin,
and my mind is mad and has mushroomed in,
and I call each flower Katharine.
And I call each flower Katharine
where the blossoms flame and stray.
My darling, my dearest Katharine,
I have placed my love in clay,
and a dark and desperate flower grows
and gobbles the joy therein –
it is now by night that the brightest day
is shinnying summer-thin;
but Katharine, my Katharine,
Kathy, Kathy, go in,
for my heart has mangled my brain to bran
and my love is ****** and sin.

The loops of hawthorn flutter all day
but my darling, my darling, I’m done
with the wildered stars that confuse the sky
and the blackness that is one.

I call each flower Katharine.
Each beauty begets each pain.
Where the desperate violence lies and groans,
the mind weeps a furious rain;

and last but not least the lupins flare
and I call them Katharine.
Since I went from you, I’ve been horrified
by the cruelties closing in.

Ah, Kathy, Kathy, what will become of you
and your voice as soft and low
as the shadowing whistle of verdurous leaves
stirred by the gusts that blow?

And what of your petalled arms and *******
that were treasures in my hands?
The only ream is a broken star
and a blaze in forsaken lands.

I’ll burn the heart and the mind of flame
and I’ll do my best to win;
but my dearest love, my sweetest love,
I shall call it Katharine.

I am fighting flames and my heart is bent
on the flowers that never rim
a tomb as lost as an oyster-pearl
that I’ve labelled Katharine.
But the label is a useless wrong
for your tiny, bitten hands
and the pitiless pointers going in
to the love-deserted strands
with a waste of pain and an empty sea
and Katharine on my mind
and the leaping storms and the bartered loves
in the summer-winds that blind.

My Katharine, my Katharine,
I have called to you all day
but the night has twined like monster ****
and the buckles burst the way.

I am led beyond by a file of rust
and a palmed hand like a fist
and a desperate ritual driven up
like a dark moon through dark mist;
but I pause and pander to any stem
that is broken into bud,
and the poppies that are fluttering
are jets of your brooding blood;
and every petal and every vein
is Katharine through and through.
What should I care for an Amazon wish
or kaleidoscopic dew
when every English field and fold
is alive with Katharine still,
and the wavering spray of a honey-tree
is an idee fixe at will?

But why should I even wish to write
with thousands who scribble a rhyme?
I cannot begin to substantiate you
with the dull verse I design.
But what would your mannerisms be
if I could not make them sing:
your sidelong glance or the fluttering dance
of your gentle mimicry?
your swearing that was as soft a sound
as the spiralling leaves on pools,
your downcast eyes or your tyrant-love
for the man who broke the rules? -
the rules he made with a wringing grasp
that was everywhere-despair -
a weeping child who was weeping still
though loving your loving care.

My dark-haired darling, you’re bending down,
you’re kissing my lips away.
I am crying until your ***** may drown
in my wavering tears astray.

Your humour is what I cannot bear
and perhaps the tender ease
with which you will spurn my agony
as a maniac’s disease.

I am bending down to the brief, bright plants
and up to the blossom-tree
but every beauty is Katharine
and the light has gone from me;
and everywhere in my silver-rooms
the portraits panic the air,
and conjured out of the merest sound
my Katharine standing there!

I shall take to my tumbled tower again
and the failure-flowers sow,
and the lavender-press of the dying plants
shall tender me to and fro.

I shall never notice the flowers again
but Kathy, Kathy, there is
the violent pain in the misery
of the unremembered kiss.

Remember me, for I think you won’t,
you will think me a beast beyond,
a swirling stream that you visited
that you’ll turn to a dulled mill-pond.

Remember me, for my love is still
in the memory in these hymns.
All night all nights’ hours I’ve repeated here
a thousand, thousand Katharines!

i.
on such frigid atmosphere lay,
a serene fugitive.

do not look at me with such lithe eyes:
the sepulcher is only starting
       to begin.

your sleep's regimen twice-folds
origamied on the quiet cloister,
hang there, puts to test the unblinking
certainty of we who bear no retrieval.

ii.
remember when
    all the fish you gut and all the *****
      you cleave were all but meaningless
       fill?

a mutiny of stench is released,
as men continually purged you of
your poisons — us mortised to this
vague mandate.

i have wished for them to miss the mark.
i have longed for them to mime only
  but your placid face.
they have ransacked the quarry of flesh
  flashed bare against mirrors riveted
   to split-seconds of hours.

iii.
when i was young,
much sleep was needed — a noonday travail to all fretting but a dream of dogs.

now this thump of quietness
may mean no recovery.
the speculations to gnaw for sleep are
lost in a blink of an eye:

the blanket that once smelt of camphor
now engulfs in a single blast of cerement.
        — this scrap of a thing that we
             almost have no use for.

iv.
a furious consideration of roomfuls
   disallowed by a heady ruling of
   emotion's precision.

that, of the most difficult choices—
knowing where to fecundate rest.
your body heeds
            no metaphysical reckoning.
  the preordained space for you to occupy, this unwanted silence that keeps
   on renaming things we cease to forget.
a sentence seized by a clause of wood.

  all too soon to wave as a single beat
  is thrown a hundred ripples into my
  eyes, dragged along and trundling there,
     left lengthening to leave, never to wait.

not with time, nor with a touch we choose
to contest — but an eyeing space,
   a moment to attract transience.

v.
i will only look at you once — lacquered
   with solace.

no ellipsis of breath could continue you.
no paragraphs would forgo of your
   punctuations. i deny my defeat
against one who brooks with victory.

    no hint of other chroma.
    a chiaroscuro of beating petals,
   left only to thrive and not swing
    with verdurous display.

how to tell if this is true?
i touch myself as words gyrate
  in the room that received your body
  like the lighthouse that feeds the sea.

—  or maybe sheathed with the untruth.
  this enigma yields no revelations.
  too late to ring yet still continuing on,
    an early drop of dew.

Oh, those mounds of gold that bestrew my yard
Are piles of crisp oak leaves I raked this fall.
Ere their deep hue of verdurous beauty
Belonged to the summertime, I recall.

Look!
now they sleep      bloodless warriors
pandemonium stilled      agony slain tranquil
death sanctified in rigid cartesian rows
honored for their sacrifice and selfless valiance
laid to rest beneath mourning grasses

Ask!
where was the higher honor due them      before war
are sacred vows      to be profaned      to be misemployed
                            
Why!
do once verdurous lives lay cold and pulseless
as spatters of red petals      tearfully fall
families breathing wistful flowers
distilling rue      with lulling scents

Adjudge!
all men      who enact lies
dishonoring crossed graves
greed calibrating scales of injustice
bodies tilted high by tonnages of gold
Aurelian kisses      vaulting wars riches

Do Not!
dishonor a warrior’s willingness to die
for bravados mouth is a soldier’s tomb
do not forsake truth and honor    our only faithful ally
ask ten-thousand whys      before one soldier dies
before the bugler's breath      sounds death's lamenting cries

Think!
Contemplate war’s fiery womb
hatred    born inextinguishable
good & evil     indistinguishable

Look, what stillborn bones lie locked in battle
this fleshless monster      we mis-named peace        


gv.2014


Matthew 6:13 . . . deliver us from “evil”
Evil as translated in 6:13 is "Poneros" A name also attributed to Satan
Which means:  "he is not content unless drawing others into the same destruction as himself"
(From Lexicon to the New Testament by Spiros Zodhiates, TH.D

"Soon
the world
won’t have a rib intact.
And its soul will be pulled out."

A line from Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1917 poem , Call To Account

“They made a wasteland and called it peace” Publius Cornelius Tacitus

She roams hills and the verdurous woodlands
and on each eve of the new moon,
she follows the river,
making merry and becoming drunk with mead-

She had wanted to be with bairn,
to have man, woman or child accompany her through the forest,
but she only knew the fawn-

Alas, as she fled her role as royalty
when the King and Queen were born a daughter,
she wished upon a jolly gay key of brass
that they would birth a son.

And so they did,
with good luck and omens,
she would celebrate not with a record of vinyl,
but with the strum of a harp and the song of quail.

waxen ivy, leaves verdurous
wind around the succulent shoot
cleaving as malignant virus
sinking deep parasitic root

as star heliacal, it makes its debut
with innocence and propriety,
growing flexuous in situ
of sun maiden of society

but as incessant circumpolar
star of eternal reign
it is stronger than star solar
sun orb of yon kingly train

round soft bark o' younger sapling
twists 'n weaves the strangling twine,
hand-to-hand contestants grappling
with hate and love, the two combine

sapping strength, convolvulus curls
its lips, agape in poison'd glee
as from its midst, river pearls,
satin bells in filigree

the sweetest blooms of ivory,
tender as a fairy's wings,
with splash of pink-toned livery
as courtiers of ancient kings

sweet reminder of beauteous nature,
hand that guides all things that are,
from thickest trunk to slend filature,
from snow crystal to morning star

i bend my ear to the cackle
of conceited, binding ****,
as whining howl of the jackal
standing over carrion feed

within i see the empty crackle,
hollowness and selfish need
to capture others in its shackle
to feel worthy in life's stampede

as those who love to feed off others
are starved of own self-worth,
and thus they need life another's
to live on G-d's good earth