(AA) Gl’Immortali VI
The great, the jewel & the mother of all battles
Saddam Hussein
Superhero
The world presents a strange sight:
The vision’s mantle is torn apart—
May valour struggle with the waves if it must
Allama Muhammad Iqbal
A hero born in freedom stalks the Earth –
From the Harbour of Americana,
Sails Captain Amazing to prove true worth,
For action prim’d, full flush with youth-vigour,
Across the waves
To isles of rotting wood
Which Bishamon enslaves, which Kraken drains of blood.
Upon a beach me made skyfall,
The trees made midnight rustle,
He took a cautious starlight stroll,
Til camst he on thick muscle,
So large it seem’d a mighty wall –
Twas throbbing tentacle
Bulging upon the profits of the theft
A sabre swing that slimy limb-length cleft!
One part grows limp the other creams
The face of Amazing
Thick scarlet streams, while distant screams,
& the flailing shaking
Of shorn & bloody sinew-spurt at tyranny’s breaking!
Pacifica
Pendulum Point
I have followed narrow twisting ridges,
Sharp-topped & jagged as a broken crosscut saw
Across the roof of all the Elk-world
Gary Snyder
Blue Polevik pursued by Valkyries
Into a titan forest over ground
Amidst the trees they’ll hear the sobbing cries
Of something strange, what makes that doleful sound;
Lesky! Lesky!
With bulging eyes outspann’d
Astonished Valkyries sink into its quicksand.
Thus Polevik comes safely to
The country of the Ice King,
Naught but a wide, white waste in view,
Where his calls went echoing,
But now a swan of turquoise huie
Swoops down to snatch the ring
Out of his hand, flown to the citadel
Where stirs his icy highness, just as well
For daemons swarm around Pyerun
To deal the killer blow
Standing upon a lake frozen
Beneath the covrant snow
The Ice King yells, the lake’s pane cracks, drags daemon hordes below…
Edge of Asia
Under Aetna
I thought that I could not be hurt
I thought that I must surely be
impervious to suffering
Sylvia Plath
Retreating to the Cyclopean isle
Mars commands Vacuna & Bellona
To fortify the shores; where, from the Nile
Enemies, toxic as belladonna
Bang like iron
Against the sea-sands, slam
King Arthur, his Lion, Hino & Uncle Sam!
Spreads combat yon the coastal wall
With all of its bangs & knocks
For Mars it did not help at all
When the Cyclopes pick’d up rocks
& at him flung them, bowling ball,
Whose skittlescattershocks
This God of War did fluster, blusterly,
Rocks wrecking trench & ramparts lustily!
Mars forc’d to flee this mean assault
“Scylla & Charybdis
Shall surely halt them… with a vault
Leapt, Lion, the abyss;
Where souls of anguish’d sailors languis’d listless with a hiss!
Ausonia
Two Lords
Young as yet the world must be
All our long, long history
Still is but its cradle song
Henrik Wegeland
Well, as far as sublimity’s concern’d,
When brute & sullen war is deified
Lord Bishamon, of all sword-honours earn’d
Commands a claim that cant’ be overturn’d
With backs whip-crack
Three Wyvrn take to air
Jabberwocky hunch-back’d, to take attacks elsewhere.
At once he heard the howl that hiss’d
Turn’d to the sound with a scowl
From out the swaying stalks & mist
Perch’d on a pounding peafowl
Lord Katrikeya flung a fist
& spear to disembow’ll,
A lucky weave & death’s eye flah’d right past
Now Bishamon & Vishnu’s business clash’d.
Among that spearstick scorpistorm
Pagoda blocks the blows,
In fight & form, both mighty Rome
Keeping each other’s toes,
Til’, with all force exhausted, Lord Bishamon’s fail-hood grows.
India
Under Alba
With sacrosanct cajoleries
And starry treachery of your eyes,
Tempt us back to Paradise
Francis Thompson
As Agnorona, bound, her whispers seal’d
To utter Rome’s eternal name forbade
Gaz’d on the Palatine, her instinct steel’d,
There stood a ‘last stand’ bastion, Mars made;
Janus, twin-fac’d,
Closes the temple door,
To which the Aesir rac’d & open-yank’d by Thor.
As every opinion
Dost have its counter, valid,
Mars, & his purple minion,
Turns scaly, pale & pallid,
As when the heights of Guinnion,
By Gala’s valley hid
No more, to war went Arthur, like the dat
He bore St Mary’s icon to the fray.
On seeing she, Jesus-serene,
Mars, at last, hath wilted,
With acid spleen Thor flees the scene,
Like a lover jilted,
As with a creak the scales of right & wrong for Justice tilted!
Ausonia
Stone to Dust
There was a corpse outside
It was a fine and cruel noose
coming out the corpse’s mouth
Ramón Palomares
Mars mumbles homewards to Olympus Mount,
Wounds attended by prancing succubi,
From magic flute the notes of loving fount,
From luscious Venus with a rush of sigh;
Softly seduced
She guides him from the war,
With one kiss were reduced Bellona & Ishtar.
Odin withdrew to Valhalla,
Multitudinous the throng,
Brought the Aesir all together,
Speaking truths with wounded tongue,
“From both East & West comes terror,
Our time will not be long,
Step before me captains of each legion
That march’d not east to subjugate Pyerun!”
He turn’d unto that troop of horse,
The pale, white, black & red,
“Take thee swift course to fetch a force
That stands in the good stead
Of our friend Lord Satanus…” hard hooves to their Master sped.
Asgard
Gargantua
Marble walls of palaces,
Iron bars of dungeons,
You break through them all
Alter Esselin
Dragonsflight bares the brunt of the Gryphon,
Below their fight, embattl’d in the surf,
Celtic braves war for noble Gwyddion,
All glory-worthy roaring to the turf;
Sam’s martial star
Emblazon’d on his tank,
Puffing a fat cigar for how Hell’s legions stank.
Gunshafts shell-after-shell did throw
To invert & invalid,
Sam drove his tanks into a foe
Of flesh-hood foul & acrid,
Be-elzebub survey’d the show
All worried & well hid,
A message from his master brings relief,
“Return to Hell…” joyous, in disbelief,
Sam smiled as his enemy flees,
View sweetening the veins,
Archangel breeze Saint Denys frees
From her barbaric chains,
“Pyerun awaits our armies, come we march to Asgard’s plains.”
Gaul
For Liberty
No subject for immortal verse –
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse
Cecil Day Lewis
Between the mists that cloak immortal spheres
& realms of aether soak’d illuminous,
The twinkling of a candelabrum nears,
Behold, the city, ever glorious!
O’erall sate Jove
In regal diety,
While singing angels wove gimcrack’d marqueterie.
The highest hordes of Heaven glow,
Pure & perfect was the path
To the foot-hills of Vesuvo,
To Babababagorath;
Seven heads leave off Averno,
Seven tongues spit serpent-wrath,
At Seraphim, whose bows of golden fires
Loose arrows – thro’ Hells gates the Beast retires.
Towards the long, horn’d, thick-scal’d tale
Gabriel took keen aim,
A whoosh, a wail, a gushing flail,
The Dragon maim’d & lame…
Angels smear’d in its dragonsblood, then stepp’d into the flame.
Hell
Defeating Valhalla
Rally around to the glory of our time!
The blood surges in our veins,
We die for the sake of our land
Aboul-Qacem Echebbi
The young Aesir in battlegear assemble,
Take to the air on flying manticores,
Soaring rainbow streaks that so resemble
Swarming storms of orbital meteors;
Wave after wave
Of old Asgard’s heroes
Rush to a second grave where Pyerun’s sylph-suit glows.
From Heaven, Saint Volodomyr
Flew down with angelic guard,
FEAR floated thro’ the rude Aesir;
Men’s panicking minds fresh marr’d
By Barbarossa’s disappear,
Down the road to Asgard –
Protected by Satanic riders four,
The battle left to all who fought with Thor.
The twisting saint sweeps down & spurns
Thor’s sky-twisting weapon –
Mjolnir returns, but handle burns,
Dropp’d like relay baton,
Arms-naked Thor’s heart pierced by blades deepest plunged by Pyerun.
Asia
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