The Silver Rose
(SR) Language of Love
With our lessons as a pretext we abandoned ourselves entirely to love… My hands strayed oftener to her bosom than to the pages… our desires left no stage of lovemaking untried, & if love could devise something new, we welcomed it
Peter Aberlard
INSECTS
When HE is sat upright
& SHE is sat on his lap facing him,
Their arms locked in an embrace;
This is known as the Congress of the BUTTERFLIES
When SHE is led on her back,
With her thighs raised & open,
& HE gets between her legs,
This is known as the Congress of the GRASSHOPPERS
When HE is squatting, leaning back
& supporting himself with his arms,
& SHE is doing the same;
This is known as the Congress of the SPIDERS
When HE is stood up
& SHE is knelt down between his legs,
Engag’d in the Congress of the Mouth,
This is known as the Congress of the DRAGONFLY
When SHE is led on her back,
& HE is led on his side,
Their legs entwined,
His hand upon her bosom;
This is known as the Congress of the MOTHS
When SHE is led on her side,
& HE is led on his side behind her in a tight embrace,
His hands on breast & clitiris;
His mouth on neck & ears;
This is known as the Congress of the LOCUSTS
When SHE is led on her back,
Her bottom raised on a pillow,
& HE is between her legs
Engag’d in the Congress of the Mouth,
This is known as the Congress of the SNAIL
When SHE is led on her side,
& HE is led on his side behind her
Holding her at arm’s length;
This is known as the Congress of the WASP
When SHE is on her back,
Pulling legs by the ankles,
He is knelt over her,
Bent down in the Circle of Oral Love,
This is known as the Congress of the BEETLES
REPTILES
When HE is sitting & leaning backwards,
& SHE is standing on or by his thighs,
Her back to his face, his hands supporting her sides;
This is known as the Congress of the SALAMANDER
When SHE is on all fours
& HE is behind her, his back pointing to the skies,
His arms spread like wings;
This is known as the Congress of the DRAGONS
When HE is led on his side
& SHE is led on her other side in the Circle of Oral Love,
This is the Congress of the COBRAS
When HE is led on his side,
& SHE is led on her side, facing him,
With her thigh placed over his thigh;
This is known as the Congress of the SNAKES
When HE is stood up
& SHE wraps her thighs around his neck,
& arms around his waist, in the Circle of Oral Love,
This is known as the Congress of the IGUANAS
When SHE is led on her back,
HE is between her thighs,
One of her legs is draped over a shoulder
& the other under his arm;
This is known as the Congress of the CAIMAN
When SHE is on her back,
& HE is between her thighs
With her legs wrapped sound his lower back;
This is known as the Congress of the FROGS
When HE is led on his back
& SHE is led between his thighs
In the Circle of Oral Love,
Her thighs under his armpits
& his hands on her buttocks,
This is known as the Congress of the GECKOS
When SHE is led on her belly
With her legs together
& HE lies directly on her back;
This is known as the Congress of the TURTLES
SEA-CREATURES
When HE is sat on a chair
Legs stretch’d out
& SHE kneels between his knees
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the OYSTERS
When HE is led back on a bed,
Legs hanging off the end
& SHE is engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the LOBSTERS
When HE is stood up
& SHE is knelt, legs together
Bent between his open thighs
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the CORAL
When HE is led back
& SHE is knelt lying on his belly,
His hands on her buttocks
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the SHRIMP
When He is knelt, hands on the floor,
With outstretch’d arms
& She is led on her back under him,
Her arms around his back
Her buttocks between his feet
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the CRABS
When HE is on his right side
& SHE is on her right side,
One arm wrapp’d around his waist
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the SHARKS
When HE is on his back,
Legs raised, bent at the knees,
& SHE is knelt between his thighs,
Hands around his thighs
His legs rest on her shoulder
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the SQUID
When HE is led down on his right side
& SHE is also led down on her right side
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the CALAMARI
When SHE is led back on the bed
& HE is knelt over her, thighs in her armpits
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the OCTOPUS
When He is led on his back, legs fanning out
& She is led between his legs
Engag’d in the act of the Kiss of the Seas
This is known as the Congress of the RAY
BIRDS
When SHE is on her back,
Her legs pointing upwards to the skies,
& HE is between her thighs, supporting her legs;
This is known as the Congress of the GEESE
When SHE is led on her back,
With both her legs contracted on her belly,
& HE is over her, supporting his body with his arms;
This is known as the Congress of the ROOSTER
When SHE is on her knees,
Her back pointing to the skies,
& HE is knelt behind her,
His arms wrapped around her breast;
This is known as the Congress of the KINGFISHERS
When HE or SHE is led back on a bed,
Their legs hanging over the edge,
& their lover is knelt between their knees,
This is known as the Congress of the SWANS
When HE is kneeling,
& SHE wraps her thighs around his neck & arms
& around his waist in the Circle of Oral Love,
This is known as the Congress of the PELICANS
When HE is standing upright,
& SHE rests only her shoulders & head on a bed,
Her yoni is supported by his lingam,
Her legs wrapp’d around his neck;
This is known as the Congress of the OSTRICH
When SHE is led on her back,
HE is between her thighs,
Her legs draped over both of his shoulders;
This is known as the Congress of the CRANES
When HE or SHE is sat on a chair
& their partner is knelt on the floor between their legs
Engag’d in the Motions of the Mouth,
This is known as the Congress of the OWL
When HE stands upright,
& SHE sits on his joined together hands,
Her arms wrapp’d around his neck;
This is known as the Congress of the BATS
MAMMALS
When SHE is on all fours & he is behind her,
Lifting her thighs till her vulva
Is level with his member;
This is known as the Congress of the SHEEP
When SHE is on her back, her legs together,
Her knees pointing to one side,
& HE is on his knees in the space
Between her buttocks & her legs;
This is known as the Congress of the FOXES
When SHE is on all fours
& HE is behind her,
His back pointing to the skies,
His hands on her hips;
This is known as the Congress of the DOGS
When SHE is on her knees,
Her arms flat & spreading forward,
& HE is behind her,
His back pointing to the skies
& his hands on her hips;
This is known as the Congress of the CATS
When SHE is on all fours
& HE is behind her, his back pointing to the skies,
One hand pulling on her hair,
The other slapping her buttocks;
This is known as the Congress of the STALLION
When HE is on his back, legs stretch’d out,
& SHE is led on top & facing him,
Her knees by his sides;
This is known as the Congress of the SEALS
When SHE is led on her belly
With her legs together
& HE squats behind her;
This is known as the Congress of the LIONS
When SHE is standing up, bending over a chair,
& HE is standing behind her;
This is known as the Congress of the GIRAFFES
When SHE is on all fours
& HE is behind her,
His arms wrapped around her belly or shoulders,
This is known as the Congress of the GOATS
(SR) The Scented Sutra II: Coition
The SCENTED SUTRA
PART TWO
COITION
Our desires left no stage of lovemaking untried,
& if love could devise something new, we welcomed it
Peter Aberlard
FIRST KISS
My boys, to win her lust is half the fray,
Time ripe has turn‘d to let thine arrows loose,
A well-timed kiss-surprise can paralyze,
& if reciprocal passion express’d,
There’ll be but little rusing for the rest,
But saying that, lads, kissing’s passion-pact
Is quite impossible to engineer
Unexpectedly, but only sooner
Than she thought you would; but if it’s at hand,
Let eyes in languish trembling souls connect!
‘Consummate our mutual attraction,’
Exchang’d between two psyches in silence,
Did you hear a symphony of rivers?
Or angels harmonizing harpsichords?
Or more some slab-corpse groaning in a morgue?
Deem best lips beseeching like soft cushions,
When nimble tongues love’s lesser lightning play;
If, in her mouth’s temple, you’ve been welcom’d –
O! ballet dance! O! battle of the tongues -,
In, Venus, steals on silver saliva
ON KISSING
Kisses! these easy messengers of love!
Kisses! these pearl thermometers of love!
Kisses! Love’s celebrated overture!
Beyond the goo & mess of lipstick gloss,
One million nerve fibers congregate
Upon her lips; when sensualities
Erupt, they’ll swirl like whirlpools of pleasure!
Nipping soft lips with gentle tugs of teeth,
Then slipping teasing tongues within her cave,
(Such stimulants of penetrating flesh
Shall simulate another pair of lips),
A seismic kiss shockwaves can scud thro’ souls,
Left smitten at the Gates of Paradise,
Two lives entire converge upon the point
Words urgent flow ‘twyx vulva & member,
Urging upon each other to explore
More corners of this garden of delights!
But don’t forget my Scented Sutra, son!
Secrete it secretly amidst thy things
To study in between her ravishments!
ON A WOMAN’S LOVE OF COITION
Coition-thirst ejecting with long sighs;
Between her thighs, where wanton mind resides,
Her vulva’s given to the one she loves,
This lock no other man could ever prise!
But if no fellow earns this gorgeous lust
She’ll casteth gasping gazes to the winds
Of chance & karmic fortunes, ‘til she spies
A man she might just love, her lust enslav’d,
& lays a trap, & if her prey ensnar’d,
He’ll soon be in her bed, that could be you –
You’ll sense it, too, the moment that you’ll feel
The coming together of hemispheres,
For knowing if a man desires her depths,
Spark’d by the comfort of being in love
Genitalia arousing, at last
Ceremonies of love’s temple begin
Her vulva’s nirvana awaits you both,
Yes you, her manly high priest, thrusts divine
Beam laser sensualities of love!
Such is, such was, such will be, woman’s want.
ON THE ART OF GREATER FOREPLAY
All patience is rewarded, understand
Beneath ice maidens rampant sirens lie
Anticipation now is everything,
Are you the one to make her sex-dreams real?
Let’s focus on the prize, then, heed my words,
All women somewhat like a clockwork toy
Transporting sex from great to oh-my-god!
The more you wind, the longer runs the joy!
A clitiris is not an isle of Greecian!
But well before this nuclear device
Unleashes inner tigress, tease & press
The dress around her heavenly portal;
Suck lightly on her neck, blow in her ears,
Then, nibbling lobes, disrobe her as you go!
Easing the nylon wisp which veils her charms,
On navels lavish delicious kisses,
Titillate the lower parts, biting thighs,
Go on until she is ready to swoon,
Can scarcely stammer, & her eyes are veil’d,
Then let her see your lingam, fully-grown!
ON WOMENS’ EXCITEMENT AT SEEING THE LINGAM
The happiest hankerings of women
Are that for members when them full on heat,
To see one rising underneath thy robes
Will make them lose their senses, when reveal’d
The joy upon seeing beautiful darts
Stood throbbingly erect shall make them swoon,
Astonish’d at its size, action-ready,
The noble column of thy thighs implants
A yearnful force, she’ll give herself to thee,
Pleasure-desperate in her deepest parts
Where moisture flows, forerunners of passion;
My lads, my happy boys, go rub thy bead
Against her vulva’s lips, & watch them part
& seem to say, ‘O member, enter me,
Please penetrate my plump deliciousness,
I want it done in all those precious ways
Thro’ splendid action, first from front to back,
Then right to left; now surely, soft & slow,
Now ramm’d in hard by vigorous pressure,’
Such are the thrills that fill her filthy mind!
ON THE CONGRESS OF THE MOUTH
When holding lover-lingams by the hand,
She’ll place its tip between her moisten’d lip;
If kissing gently all the flesh expos’d,
Call this the ‘Congress of the Butterflies,’
& when her roving tongue sent out to roam,
From tip to base, this is the ‘Rite of Snakes,’
& lastly, with the yearnful man’s consent,
She’ll put his full-length lingam in her mouth,
It’s point deep-pressing hard against her throat,
This call’d the ‘Congress of the Crocodile’;
Now, lads, to kiss the yoni goes like this,
First place a pillow beneath her buttocks
For comfort, raise her passion-mound to meet
Ye tracing laces oer vaginal lips,
Then cunnilingual ticklings send intense,
Deliver’d by a candle-flicker tongue
Whence by her spasms, her jolting stiffness,
Her gasp of death, you’ll understand she’s done;
Not quite, of course, her yoni’s fully prim’d
For penetrative pleasures deeper still!
ON THE CONGRESS OF THE OCTOPUS
Softening the tensions from her lovezones,
Place your palm just underneath her navel
With deftest pressure energize her parts;
Caressing her inner vaginal lips,
Gently insert two fingers & rotate,
When, with a deft flick of her clitiris
You’ll hear her sighing pleasures to the Gods
Releas’d in liquid silvers, pubic bone
Pushes up to meet you, begging for more;
Then add your tongue, lick & tease her nipples,
Now suck them hard within thy gallant lips,
Your other hand expertly massaging
Her neck, her breasts, her bottom, & her thighs,
Hot rushes flood, light-headed, breathing wild,
Son, tweak a nipple with a snap of pain,
For now’ the time to find the threp’ney piece
That is her sacred G-spot, little sponge
Of Heaven, hook & beckon it to you,
Placing your thumb upon her clitiris
& squeeze them both together, then she comes!
ON THE MEETING OF LINGAM & YONI
My fit & eager lads, my lustful boys,
Life grants us one unquestionable treat,
Made party to the swirling cosmic dance,
Think of yourself a High Priest of passion
& naked, aching females thy temple,
The altar is her yoni, when arous‘d!
Stok‘d by the balmy brinks of ecstasy,
Hesitate no longer to assist her,
Whose busy hand thy throbbing member guides,
Clutch‘d tightly by her wet vulva’s entrance,
Thy lingam presses thro’ her flower bed
& with a thrust penetrates that furnace,
Where, lodg’d within, completely, hear her yelp
In pain, tho’ pleasure really; interlace,
Her limbs with yours, bring kisses and claspings,
Then, visiting her vulva with your spear,
Speaking the animal language of love
Do not miss the corners, ceiling, nor centre,
Face-to-face in lotus style, side-by-side,
On top, behind, on chairs, or she astride!
ON THE UNION OF THE PARTS
The swelling member hare forms, bull, or horse,
A woman’s yoni mirrors such wildlife –
Deer, mare, elephant, according to depth;
This renders six unequal unions,
‘Tis high if man exceedeth her in size
& highest if her size the most remote,
Likewise ‘tis low if woman exceedeth,
& lowest if she elephant, him hare;
Magnetic pulls of passions & desires,
Now from three species; small, middling, intense;
Tis better to enjoy the carnal act
With one who shares your sexual vigour;
Finally, three kinds of men and women
Divided, are, by volcanic timing
Erupting into climax; some short-timed
Some tim’d moderately, & some long-timed;
In all seven hundred & twenty-nine
Kinds of lovers, of these just eighty-one
Match timing, size, & passion, ensuring
Delectable soirees with your darlings!
ON THE CLIMAX
If foreplay perform’d to full arousal,
Satisfaction shall feel like perfection!
You’ll hear it, son, there is no sweeter sound!
Her muscles tense, she panting like asthma,
Uttering those cutest little noises,
The time’s come to stroke her, offer phrases
Of gentle encouragement, guide her home,
& when her voice confesses deep rapture
Begging you don’t hold back, maintain the pace,
Or gallop even faster, like a knight
Whose solid lance has pierc’d her very heart,
Her body quivers, releasing rivers,
Of energy smashing thro’ the chakras,
With nipples stiff, erect on swelling breasts,
At pleasure’s crisis, gorg’d vaginal lips
Shall grasp & tug thy phallus, with a gasp
& twitch of muscles, hear her scream release’d
Lip-bitingly as enters, she, Heaven!
Then let her rest in excuisite pleasure,
But only for a short while – why stop there!
ON THE CONQUEST
Stand up! Your naked glory is at hand!
A vision of her Heaven sprawls below!
Led back, a lazing lioness, unrob’d,
Your woman’s voluptuousness reveal’d
Discarded clothes concealing, once, divine
Spread scatter’d in a warpath to the door,
Like garlands to her temple, worship there
The spirit of your sexual desires,
That she has manifested is rested,
For we have done our holy work down there!
Her eyes clos’d in the mortification,
Fallen the faunicating fortitrice!
On her face thy chronicle of conquest,
Is written in her breathing & her bliss;
Imagine this planet as a garden
As once it was afore even Eden
Was lost, scent floating gracefully on air
From gorgeous pompom blossoms, there she is,
Made prettified & fragrant in her bloom,
& so, well done, my sons, you listen’d well!
ON THE EUPHORIA
Beautiful maiden-blossoms of the world
Watch the boys abuzz about thy petals,
Half-mad briven by his thirst for honey
Flitting among thy inflorescent hues,
Ye younger bees, permit me, as pilot,
To summarize didaction in a song
There’s love & there is the Scented Sutra
Before you find the first, I strongly urge
A studious account of my verses
For I have made a woman touch herself
In those soft places – secet, soft places –
All thro’ her life after a single tryst
Each monumental moment I admir’d,
Their bouncing bosoms, their waterfall hair,
Beckoning my gallopings of pleasure,
When, joyous, with all senses overcome
By something close to godhead, & the dawn!
Singing thy sonorous song of triumph,
They rested on my chest; then, dismounting,
Lay down beside me, panting, in a pile.
(SR) Humanology: Age I
41
LOVEPARTNERS
Lovers’ chemistry lightning strikes;
Random! Miraculous! Irresistible!
Deem darlings’ syrupy discourse
Dreamy, celestial honey
Couples cuddling thro’ sleep
Beloved upon waking
Remembering anniversaries solidifies lovetrysts
If giftladen, especially
Potential lovepartners’ unpredictable personalities
Like lucky dips
Cupid creates romantic twins
For every soul
Like dressing without mirrors
Smittenness masks faults
42
LOVING
Tho’ shade alleviates sunblaze,
Cupid’s scorches unshieldable
Cupid launches ‘unsinkable’ Titanics
Across stormy oceans
Exists no earthly remedy
Alleviating rampant lovesickness
Deeds best communicate love
Not mutable words
Betwyx flusterfuck & fortitude
Oscillate loving hearts
Obeying love’s discoveries easy
Staying loved, problematic
Imagining our lovers, constantly,
L’amore’s unwritten law
43
QUARREL
When emotional fencing finishes
Let lovesex reunite!
Eyes consum’d by love-rage;
Restless, sleepless, lidless
An honest, well-timed compliment
Banishes ridiculous quarrelling
Resolving arguments before bedtime
Avoids caustic nightsulking
Screeching voice, beseeching eyes
Love’s vulgar weapons
When lovers soothe us
Why pretend unpleasantness
Swab perspiring, contentious foreheads
With apologetic handkerchiefs
44
AMABANDON
If amabandon’s a battle
Reunition’s victory banquet
Acute agonies of amabandon
Surpass grief’s lamentations
Between lovers fearing separation
Even intercourse painful
We’re alive when loving
But separation murders
Being far from love-partners
Possesses certain charms
Spectres of absent lovers
Haunt emotional hours
When absent darlings return
Brutal agonies evanish
45
HANKERING
Desperately pining for love-partners
Precludes present positivity
Skulking shoulders? Loosened jewels?
Partners are departed
Come eventide’s fetid desperation,
Separated sweethearts inconsolable
Morning resuscitates discarded darlings
Evening murders again
Aching for absent lovers
Smothers our existence
Languishing hearts swell enraptur’d
Imagining returning lovers
Anxiously awaiting absent amourettes
Days become weeks
46
JEALOUSY
Partying lovepartners jawdroppingly dress’d,
Mindmonkeys imagine infidelities
Declaring jealouseans; ‘The Loveliest,’
Earns; ‘Among whom!’
‘I thought of you!’
Earns, ‘You forgot!’
Jealousy’d drgon slays love
Pretending its defending
However pleasant one’s personality
Jealousy operates independently
If loving sensitive jealouseans
Reinforce affection daily
Jealousy tarnishes garden hearts
Insecurity’s neurotic weeds
47
WEDLOCK
Marriage blends bitter barrels
With sugary honeylicks
Marriages need spotless beginnings
Otherwise murkiverse torments
When prospecting for spouses
Examine potential in-laws
Wives lacking domestic excellence
Life’s irresponsible chaff
Marry women for virtues
Comeliness collapses eventually
Our best married men
Woo wives constantly
Each ass-kissing, sycophantic husband
Embarrasses his sex
48
FAMILIES
Entertaining one’s many relations
Prosperity’s priceless advantage
Efficient families stoically bare:
Burdens, hardships, misfortunes
Families nurturing internal hatred
Unite only superficially
Remain impartial within kinfighting
Interference rebounds volatilistic’ly
Even honorable law-loving judges
Avoid domestic disputes
Deem family-ties sturdiest trees
Bendable, but unbreakable
Between frightening fraternal quarreling
Refrain from interferance
49
HOUSEHOLD
Prudently investigate potential neighbours
Before moving houses
Before establishing civic democracy
Liberate one’s household
Households extending benevolent hospitality
Surmount domesticity’s pinnacle
Happily entertaining streaming guests
Applaud above glory
Crofts of honest happiness
Lofty as Olympus
Never discuss home affairs
About village piazzas
Daily onstruct family improvements
Delay destroys households
50
CHILDREN
Deem newborn infant minds
Morn’s untrammell’d snow
Voices of giggling nestlings
Sweeter than flutes
First leaders of families
Our smallest young
Intelligence of treasur’d offspring
Spreads pleasures immeasurably
Where infants fear phantams
Adolescents fear unpopularity
Older women craving babies
Seek winter figs
Our most wonderful offspring
Obey parental edicts
51
PARENTING
Like greenwood burning badly
Pamper’d babies rebel
Chasten errant, immature offspring
Hope remains eternal
When children mature successfully
Households deepen foundations
Parenthood’s problems need perspective
Avoid unrealistic expectations
When children blossom adultwards
Contentious changes inevitablis’d
Granting teenagers plentiful independence
Demands increasing watchfulness
Parents merrily spoiling children
Raise lazy adults
52
ADULTERY
Because faithful chastity exists,
Why gulag wives?
As knives gouge backs
Bedswerving scours relationships
Those lustfully gazing elsewhere
Commit adultery… still
Sorrows surround straying spouses;
Solicitors, sinfulness, shame
Wooing best friends’ partners
Generates social armageddon
Deflecting opportunistic sexual predators
Fortifies spousehood’s especialness
Couples comprehending property-owning rights
Disnecessitate infidelity’s folly
53
LOVELOSS
Doubt, jealousy, deception, cliché:
Ruins romantic irresistibility
Only ‘occasionally’ ‘playing away’
Amputates septic relationships
Phantasms of happiest moments,
Haunt terminated romances
Lovesessives moodily ruminating communications
Never achieve closure
Oftentimes sweetest of lovers
Become strangers, eventually
When lovers’ hearts harden
Tearwells dry, disinterestedly
Untruthful pledges, broken promises
Fractures erodable love
54
DIVORCE
Unloving, unstimulating, unscrupulous spouses
Offer only security
Wedlock trundling without lovemaking
Troubles sorrowful lifetimes
Multiple disappointing, sequacious marriages
Linger until death
When separation seems certain
Understand childrens’ helplessness
If pains outnumber benefits
Dissolve unsatisfactory marriages
Houses of fainéant procrastinators
Dilapidate, then divorce
When aftermaths augur unbearably,
Propose divorces cautiously
55
LABOUR
When making good beginnings
Future workloads halv’d
Better passing idle days
Before working profitlessly
Empolyers offering advance payment
Invite bad work
Employers lazily delegating workloads
Cannot incompetence complain
Industriousness accumulates beaconic wealth
Idleness attracts impoverishment
Hunger eggs everybody on
Slothfulness eats stones
Great pains, little gains
Makes workers weary
56
MONEY
Without watchtowering one’s wealth
Money wanders squanderingly
Thieves never experience shame,
Only wealth’s captivation
Money speculated invites windfalls –
Money sav’d, thieves
Happiness dependent upon money
Never proper happiness
Money attracts effervescent friendship
Poverty, fetid solitude
Gathering cash-quisition melts eventually
Like music festivals
Integrity proudly unfurls prosperity
Dishonesty – Switzerland’s Banks!
57
BUSINESS
Object utility increases value
Commodity rarity moreso
When rogues assist businesses
Finances vanish mysteriously
Upon prospective, far-off profits
Defer serious investment
Creditors possess longest memories,
Debtors insist forgetfulness
Cornfields tended far away
Decimated by crows
Sellers have single eyes,
Buyers one hundred
Patient sellers, opportune buyers
Obtain best prices
58
WEALTH
One famous painter’s painting
Worth twenty hospitals!
One tiny, flaw’d diamond
Outprices perfect pebbles
Present happiness, future blisses
Nemesis poverty deprives
Lurking behind miserable poverty
Many more miseries
Charity seeking no reward,
Oceans giving rain
Ancestral inheritances diligently preserv’d
Scoundrels rapidly squander
Whenever heirlings recklessly squabble
Strangers inherit estates
59
CHARITY
Charity seeks no recompense –
Who reimburses clouds?
However gorgeous, however fabulous,
Uncharitable people pointless
Mendicants melt umbrageous hearts
Refusal breaks theirs
Never beg unwilling givers
Even when desperate
When soliciting happy supercharitables
Begging actually giving
Before openly charitable souls
Vagrancy’s anguish vanishes
Whenever Heaven rain retains
Charity abandons Earth
60
SCROOGES
Niggards never spending money
Rarely invited anywhere
When death’s lightning demolishes
Money becomes unspendable
Moody scrooges procrastinating charity
Die shameful deaths
Money hoarded only numbers
Money spent, magic
Scrooges lead confus’d lives
Addicted to accumulation
Strangers eventually enjoy vaultopias
Like beautiful daughters
Hoarders hope eventual heirs
Won’t spend inheritances
(SR) Humanology: Age II
61
LEADERSHIP
Chieftains possessing unswerving willpower
Loftier than mountains
Compare vain, useless leaders
With rotting wood
Reverentially, deferentially, ungrudgingly, thankingly
Treat superior skillsets
Earth’s most powerful individuals
Enslav’d by shitting
Simplicity, purity, unpretentetiousness, diligence
Forges able commandants
Proclaim ethical, emotional intelligence
Fittest to lead
Crown, with civic leadership
Unintimidatable, truth-seeking thinkers
62
KINGSHIP
Taking frequent inspection tours
Maketh monarchy accessible
Greater kings than Ravana
Vanish’d within eyeblinks
Energetic rulers energize populations
Lazyled peoples flop
Frequently conducting inspectorial tours
Renders monarchies accessible
Subjects serving unkind kings
Deserts lacking rainfall
Examples of efective kingship
Inspires regional leaders
Clever courts cast-out castigatingly
Wiretaps, whispers, winks
63
GOVERNMENT
Into improving public works
Channel state resources
Like one’s own child
Treat every citizen
Alleviate invalids, feed hunger,
Release unjust captives
Improving law, evolving equality
Inspires galvanising governments
Economies expand like plants
Water roots accordingly
Whenever hunger’s howlings heard
Lower taxes immediately
Whenever spies unwittingly concur
Deem data correct
64
MINISTERS
Better ministers persuade minds
Before regulating lives
Never promote bored ministers
Reward energetic enthusiasm
Ministers placed over peoples
Must win affections
Envy, cruelty, anger laziness
Affects ministerial impartiality
Elect ministers thro’ merit
Not partisan politics
Ministerial ability clearly revealed
Handling troubled times
Only promote complicated edicts
Following minsterial acceptance
65
TYRANNY
Megalomania demands total control;
Thoughts, actions, movement
Votes for establish’d parties
Liberty’s death-warranting signatures;
Every citizen’s inalienable perogative
Ejecting, obscurifying tyrants
Fakes crises justify tyrants
Stripping Human Rights
Floods of fake news,
Poisons national conversations
Cabalists: mad, castrated bulls,
Truthseekers: gallant matador
Alexander, Ceasar, Hitler, Napoleon,
Ambition’s hyperactive puppets
66
CRIME
Minds guided by morality
Deny criminality’s nastiness
Those impuls’d by necessity
Respect no laws
Crimes unpunish’d unacknowledg‘d, unexamin‘d,
Ruin country’s irreparably
When catch cunning criminals
Become that criminal
Because weeding improves fields
Hoodlums need removing
Never announce somebody’s criminality
Until proven guilty
Thieves never sense shame,
Only wealth’s captivation
67
JUSTICE
Armour laws, bolster sentencing,
With universal uniformity
Wherever justice insists us
Circumvent unpersuadable protest
When wealth influences justice
Challenge corrupt custodians
Impart, impartially, inculpate jurisprudence:
Confessions, witnesses, science
Armour, with universal uniformity
Consequential judicial sentencing
Rehabilitating criminals assisting communities
Out-merits soul-sapping incarcerations
Eye for an eye
Blinds the World
68
WAR
Defenceless Kings perish promptly,
At war’s onset
No greater misfortune exists –
Underestimating one’s enemies
If borders left unguarded
Sophisticated nations fail
Supercitadels blend heroic garrisons
With plentiful supplies
Armies perish without subsistence
Secure supply-lines ceaselessly
Gigantic battalions exist ephemerally
Without competent leadership
Deem no army indestructible
Detachments defeatable piecemeal
69
BATTLE
Prefer inferior enemy forces,
Never oppose impregnability
When enemies make mistakes
Never interrupt them
Good iron never nails
Good soldiers, cannonfodder
Sharks: invincible in water,
Powerless on land
Whencesoever victory beckons, fight!
Otherwise ingenuities employ
Upon dividing one’s enemies
Synchonise wide-fronted attacks
Tirelessly pursue routing enemies
Reinforcements rapidly entrench
70
WISDOM
Heated gold remains gold
Enlightenment always enlighten’d
Unreliable sources of gnosis;
Faith, superstition, opinion
Circumvent brambles blocking paths,
Discard bitter cucumbers
Inner wisdom’s inviolable fortress
Blocks destructive forces
If sages fault us
Deem criticism priceless
Wisdom’s ways nourish everything
As rivulets, rivers
As canals transport goods
Wisdom channels mentality
71
KNOWLEDGE
Deem wiser beings candles
Lighting millions more
Remembrances of past events
Futurity’s resourecful guidebooks
Traverse life’s slippery slopes
With sapient staffs
Beauty queens lacking knowledge
Mute, painted mannequins
Wherever knowledge leads us
Excellence says, ‘follow’
When fig-trees bear figs
Being surpris’d absurd
Knowing one knows nothing
Life’s truest knowledge
72
TEACHING
Humanity inherits, improves, imparts,
Batons of erudition
Imperishable education illuminates intelligence
Demolishing delusional ideals
Impressive, but untestable teachings
Merely discombobulating gibberish
Despite devising theoretical doctorates
Practical experience essential
Before imparting meaningful learning
Thoroughly understand it
Better encouraging creative intelligence
Before force-feeding facts
As the teacher teaches
They’ll also learn
73
CONTROL
Angels accompany personal restraint
Daemons escort waywardness
Never boast about tomorrow
Before passes today
Ascetics mastering pentasensory chariots
Pedastall’d by godhead
Knowing halting’s optimum moment
Dis-enfrancishes dangerous potentialities
Extracting want’s rotten cancer
Ensures harmonious existence
From mountainous mental abstemiousness
Joys cornucopian spring
Where paranoia breeds panic
Hysteria feeds disaster
74
REPENTANCE
As thoughts dye souls
Repentance removes stains
Prefer destitution’s stark minimalism
Possessions befuddle mind
Like colonists taming swamps
Repentance ressuciates spirituality
Entangling indulgences invite destruction
Penance spreads pleasance
Minds immune to improvement
Bitter, uncookable paddymelons
Beyond addiction’s turbid quicksand
Renunciates effortlessly glide
As silversmiths remove impurities
Improve oneself, meticulously
75
WATCHFULNESS
Following paths of unwatchfulness
Ends in disaster
When watchfulness conquers thoughtlessness
Wisdom’s mountain ascended
Compare garrisoning natural borders
With preventing carelessness
Those loving transient pleasures
Envy ascetics eventually
Better to conquer oneself
Than enemies numerous
Fear not raving loonybins
Watchfulness protects encroachment
Active your life’s hero
Avoiding its victim
76
AGEING
Pensioners! Perform duties urgently
Before dementia’s onset
Active Pensioners maintaining joyfulness
Prevent pathetical tapering
Time’s ticking, tocking clock
Earth’s first monarch
As fallen fruits decay
Beauty fades away
Our days are axestrokes
Felling life’s oaks
Judge not elderly bigotry
Society sculpts souls
Around steadily stooping spouses
Marital lust fades
77
DYING
Resenting Death’s inescapable inevitability
Life’s foremost folly
Deathdoorean moods rapidly divert,
Avoid jocular effusions
When Death cherishes us
Bodies wither uselessly
Generosity before we die
Justifies our lives
Against dying’s regent power
Ceaseless weeping useless
Good lives conclude eventually
Like excellent parties
Life’s one lucky loan
Death recalls debts
78
DEATH
Exalt upon unique greatness
Imperishable, posthamous praise
Shitting toddler, snotting dodderer
Death’s bludgeon equalizes
The ones who buried you
soon mourn’d themsleves
From life’s painful fevers
Death brings liberation
As bodies shut down
Peace, blissful peace
As birth resembles awakening
Death brings sleep
As corpses slowly rot
Grief diminishes daily
79
SPITITUALITY
Without obtaining spiritual intelligence
Humanity studies profitless
Across life’s boundless ocean
Faith escorts believers
Universal religious conformity reflects
Humanity’s higher consciouness
Consider highest saintliness water,
Beatitude nourishes everything
Religious Divinity’s every aspect
By Humanity created
Loving one’s peerless deity
Cleanses anxious minds
Celestially enlighten’d evangelical svengalis
Exalt theological scriptures
80
DIVINITY
As A’s announce alphabets
Divinity defines existence
Where magick meets science
Find, there, God
Dreaming svengalis merely men
Only thought divine
Surrendering unto divine silence
Godhead annhialates sensation
Diving deeply within oneself
Discovers directing divinity
As carpenters fashion timber
Divinity controls souls
Principlising spiritual, suprapersonal heights
Humanity penetrates Divinity
(SR) L’Intermidi II: THE SAGA OF THE YOUNG KURT COBAIN – BLEACH
For Emily Beeson
They usually go through childhood thinking they’re special. Its partly instinctual & maybe they’ve been told by their parents or teachers that theyre special, maybe they’re put in a gifted children overachieve class in a grade school. For whatever reason they end up molding into a person aware of their abilities & not understanding them & having bloated egos caused by society’s insistence that those with an overly functional insight should be prais’d & consider’d on a higher level.
Kurt Cobain
L’Intermidi II
THE SAGA OF THE YOUNG KURT COBAIN: Bleach
The stars returning to the very spot
They shone, align’d in astral jamboree
When Kurt left Earth – Muse! free the cosmic knot
That binds past lives, release, thro’ alchemy,
In me, a poet stirring up his pot
Of mimesi, to shake those visions free
That clammy, from the vortex, ruffle forth,
To verse-conversing Ollamhs of the North.
Of copious mind-gifts, the Sonneteer
Presents, to us, an art most magical,
In which the fleshspots of the past appear,
As powerful as if them Biblical;
Vividly breathing, moving & sincere,
So much, such proves a lucid miracle,
As live again, unbent from history,
The best of those who’d mark posterity.
Where left, we, Kurt? Alone in muddy streets,
Barely alive, halfway to thirty,
In pockets copies of ‘Perfume’ & Keats
He passes by houses; ramshack, dirty –
A time to triumph tear out from defeats
To funny be, & foxy, & flirty,
& with a brash electric in his hand,
Light up the world, & front a famous band.
Led on his back Kurt look‘d up to the skies
& felt the sun’s transparency thro’ lids
Clos’d by teenage tears; ‘cross x-ray eyes
Microscopic plankton & arachnids
Danc’d to a tune he‘d started to devise,
Some melody to elevate the kids
From ill-starr‘d debates of negative things
To music & moshing & geetah strings!
On Aberdeen God seem’d to piss each day
With seven foot of rainfall ev’ry year,
A dungeon always overcast & grey,
Place pitiless with nothing nice to cheer,
America’s unwanted stowaway
Whose dwellers drown in dreariness & beer;
Nothing much comes in, hardly anything
Goes out – a lonely gull with wounded wing!
O! Rock & Roll! What force hast thou become?
No more about the music, but the hair,
The 80s saw a dirge of big bass drum,
Divided by an ever-steady snare,
& basslines like a harvest tractor’s hum,
As guitar licks slash razors thro’ the air,
But stagnant as abandon’d billabong,
With riffage pretty much the same each song!
Kurt sits & stares atop the shining seas,
To Tokyo, Kamchatka, over there
Somewhere; his soul, he sens’d, was Socrates,
This portion of Pacific his new share
Of Planet Earth – behind him giant trees
Form‘d his own estate, continuous store xx
Of unspoil’d air to keep his mind alive,
While winter’s sharpest trials he’d survive!
Most days he’d drifted to the timberland,
To dream himself a Catcher in the Rye;
Down dim-lit streets, by oceanic strand,
Crept into basements, slept ‘neath open sky,
A kid unwanted, clearly, out of hand,
Whom, in his darkest moments, just to cry,
Would sneak a night in that same hospital
His life began, & all his damn trouble!
‘Neath Young Street Bridge, one special, dreary day,
As the period of a pendulum
Began, in doleful rains, to drift away
From lowest ebb, t’wards joyous fate to come;
Kurt first time sings his ‘Something in the Way’
A string had snapped, but an internal drum
Still kept the beat, while forlorn droned, in tune,
This bridge-bat caterwauling to the moon.
The mysterious manna from Heaven
Which, thro’ our art, moves us, & consumes us
Drives us helpless, blindly, as obsession
Uses, confuses us & illumes us;
Remnants of ectoplasmic possession
Oozes thro’ juvenilia, dooms us
In dedication to a waste of life –
Or not, for Art is Art & Art is Life!
As felt, Kurt, bless’d with femininity,
He gravitates to the gay kid in town
Shared Myer Loftin’s notoriety
“Fuckin’ faggots!” “Cover your butts!” “Don’t bend down!”
But, revelling in non-conformity,
Wearing, proudly, an anti-redneck crown,
Kurt phantasised on fucking men in sweat,
But not in Aberdeen, no, not just yet.
One morning Kurt awoke & hop’d to speak
The words of birds, who in a hellsome rage
Disturb’d the earth with truth, ‘I’m not a freak,
Kurt thought, ‘just a grasshopper in a cage!
But, let me loose in the long grass to seek
Likeminded types to swipe this dusty age
From crap, & grate with noises too clean ears…’
Such visions thrill’d as, to his fate, time steers.
Punk music pierces the parking lot of
Montesano’s only grocery store,
Where grizzleback Melvins shunt, grind & shove
Young tastes away from poppycocks that bore
Inanity in brains – Kurt fell in love,
Thinking, ‘god, this is what I’m looking for!’
Becomes, at once, their captain superfan
Paints posters, roadies, even drove the van!
A punk was born, completely appetis‘d
For spiritmorph, who slicks & spike-backs hair,
Joins with the ‘Supercool Disenfranchise’d
Society,’ at which rough Rednecks stare
With shock, disgust & horror – just despis’d!
Responding, Kurt daubs spraypaint ev’rywhere,
“Forever Punk” on posters, walls & cars,
Less graffiti – more great artist’s memoirs.
O! Irony of ironies, Kurt got
The job of janitor at his old school
A place, it seems, where all his dreams now rot,
But overalls he thought were kinda cool
One day, imagining perfect film shot,
For a video, this gym vestibule
Fill’d with a pep rally, which round his band
Whips up a phrenzied, mosh-pit Dixieland.
Unable punk to buy in Aberdeen
He’d have to make his own, with amp’s ten watts
Full power straining, screams for Halloween
Gnashing a prototune called ‘Papercuts’,
Then slumps exhausted, all a-sweat, serene,
After the blast – he felt it in his guts,
With just three chords he could have, after all
Something to contribute to rock & roll.
Aunt Mari had a four-track, now & then
Kurt puts songs down, percussion wooden spoons
Upon an empty suitcase; denizen
Of low distorted holes, guttural croons
Evolving somewhere into something ‘zen,’
That once or twice resemble actual tunes
& now, with ‘Fecal Matter’, he’d record
A formal demo, t’where his soul outpour’d.
That demo did the rounds of Aberdeen,
‘Illiteracy Will Prevail,’ its name,
Bloodcurdling gusto agitating spleen
& perfect grounds to hurt, to hate, to blame,
On one song Krist Novoselich grew keen
& made the call, the birth of all his fame;
“Hey Kurt, it’s Krist!” “Hey, man”, “I’ve listen’d to
Your tape, I’m really loving that ‘Spank Thru.’
Some summon kindred spirits in their dreams,
Handfuls will get to meet them in the flesh,
As Krist did Kurt, vice versa, sharing schemes,
A sense of humour, cigs, & tastes that mesh –
Six foot seven, head banging on the beams,
& five foot 9 (taller than Bangladesh
Still,) they look’d an odd-ball couple, but held
A universe between them, in the meld.
“JESUSFUCKINGCHRISTALMIGHTY !” what roar
From Kurt erupted, flicking thro‘ vinyl,
“Krist! What the fuck! Whatcha owning these for?
The Eagles, Carpenters, Yes, & Lionel
Richie! Wow! Joni Mitchel’s a puss-faced whore!
They’ve all got to go, man, & that‘s final!”
Krist laughs, then chucks the lot in next door’s skip,
Cause dedicate, & definitely hip.
When Kurt departs Krist’s mum was all a rage
“Son, this new friend of yours is pure white trash,
Don’t like his vibes at all, it’s just a stage
You’re going thro’, it’ll pass in a flash…”
“But ma!” “But nothing… son, please don’t engage
With him anymore, shave off that moustache
Too, you look ridiculous, doncha think…”
Then left to drown her anger with a drink.
Exciting when first a band rehearses
Experimental stuffage toss’d at walls,
To see what sticks, something real emerges,
Beginning what the grinning critic calls
Embryonic, neolithic cursus
Of style – Kurt vomits words like Niagara Falls,
Turn’d anti-establishment anarchist
Who’ll rage against the world with open fist!
Thinking that country rock could go down well
In Aberdeen, & pay them well, they oughta
Learn some classic covers, found they gel
Best doing songs of Credence Clearwater
Krist took the geetah, Kurt took the cowbell,
& for a fresh accoutrement, bought a
Bass for Stevie Newman, off a school friend,
Away they roar’d, less band more ‘let’s pretend!’
Next drops their own apartment, with its chores
Its bills & rent – those feudal overheads,
So scores some low job, Kurt, at Ocean Shores,
A handyman with several tool sheds,
But all he did was open hotel doors
With passkeys on a hunt for empty beds
To catch up on his sleep after a night
Of jamming… jamming til the dawn of light!
The very day Kurt got his own wee place,
With happy heart his artistry extols
Sets dark macabre crawling ev’ry space,
A gallery of quarter’d, hung-drawn dolls,
Paintings of death, deformity, disgrace,
& multitudes of scarr’d, scour’d gangster molls
All fix’d like targets, in a votive mix
Of offerings to Punk’s Imperatrix!
It was the fifth rehearsal, sixth, perhaps,
When Kurt & Stevie drank themselves insane,
& came to blows, fought first like playground saps,
Then ante upp’d, Steve wriggles to obtain
A vacuum cleaner, brandishing with slaps,
While Kurt, with two by four, bash’d Stevie’s brain –
It hardly took no time to understand
As faded did the bruises, so the band.
How proud was Kurt of his horrible home
Feeding off french fries cruddy oven burnt,
The rent he felt the tyrant tax of rome
But paid it off with money that he’d earned
Out Ocean Shores, where wave-breaks endless comb
The restless grey Pacific, licks he’d learnt
Last night escorting labours – Sonic Youth,
Bad Brains, Scratch Acid – rancid & uncouth.
There’s genius in unexpected towns,
Among the rednecks – ballet dancing blooms,
Among the trailer parks – a girl makes gowns,
Flea market fabric magic at the looms;
To souls untaught they seem like silly clowns,
To laugh’d at be from smoky, tin-can rooms
In states of stale decay, how waste they lives,
While one block down bohemianic thrives.
Och! Still a name would not appear that rocks,
Both ‘Puking Worms’ & ‘Pukearrhea’ tried,
Now ‘Spina Bifida,’ now ‘Poo Poo Box’,
‘Egg Flog’ & ‘Whisker Biscuit,’ who’ll decide
This something so important for the flocks
To pin their fleeces on, out-puff their pride
‘Pen Cap Chew,’ ‘Ted Ed Fred,’ ‘Skidrow’ & ‘Bliss’,
All used a gig or two, but none they’d miss.
Kurt knew a dealer back in Amsterdam,
& caught a bus, a one-way trip to hell
He’d never once condon’d that cruel scene
But here he was buzzing the back doorbell
Of some mad apartment, whiff’d with chlorine
& ask’d the dealer if he could him sell
A bag of white, or brown, he did not mind,
Just something strong to pain push from his mind.
So Kurt slam danc’d with heroin – yeah, mate,
Dress it as you like, smack is just a bitch,
The drug that’s guaranteed to fuck ya fate,
Destroy memory cells, make your soul itch,
Skin sallow, sunken cheeks like sewer grate,
& looking like you’d just slept in a ditch
Insidious, destroying not just yours,
But all those lives about you, scratching sores!
From scatologic drudge to Buddhist thought,
The band name chang’d, one night of heroin
When transcendentalism truly sought,
When, with Kurt’s vision blurring in a spin
He found ‘Nirvana’ like Brahma afloat
Upon eternal ocean, heard its din,
Its melodies, its lyrics, & its heat –
Dreaming his Xanadu life deem’d complete.
‘Nirvana,’ name of beauty, anger-free
A flower midst the noisome, punkish park,
Assaulting ear lobage relentlessly
But not Cobain’s lot, somewhere from the dark
Recesses of his mind, a silent sea
Where oozes slimy things, below a spark
Of lyrics swept by melody, to snatch
& catch them, & them to new songs attach.
March Eighty-Seven, Nirvana debuts
A rural Raymond beer-bash, pass by
The address, Seventeen Nussbaum Road, cruise
By slowly, acolytical, & high
Upon your pilgrimage – action renews
As two dozen strangers at the band cry
Those songs are awful, play something we know
Led Zeppelin’s heartbreaker’s quite the show.
The very first ‘Nirvana gig was out
Some backwater hicksville, split pork & beans,
It didn’t take their hosts too long to doubt
They’d done the right thing, as the guitar screams
By Krist’s booming bass, abuse Kurt would shout
At mullet-headed, metal-wedded teens
& pogoing, yanketh out his cable
Twyx the sofa & the coffee table.
The moment booms – y’know, we’ve all been there,
It’s time to go, it’s time to go right now,
A flash of insight & a slamming door,
To carpet spills Nirvana took their bow
& dash’d outside, “Fuck off!” lost fans declare
The truck doors bang when, with a screeching plough,
The wheel tore hot, until the breaks releas’d
Sweeping this troupe of minstrels from the feast.
They sped back home that night, thro scatter’d cars,
The fevers of the night still muster’d well,
Euphorical, they kinda felt like stars
‘Til glowering forests, a fast-food hell
Then trailer park pock-marks, boarded up scars
Of recessional assaults which befell
Small town America, Aberdeen worst.
‘To be born ‘here,’ Kurt thought, one must be curs’d…
There was no scene in Aberdeen, whose dull
Streets made of tumbleweeds rooted in dirt
& so to Olympia’s capital,
Goes all those hopes for music, where young Kurt
A maverick among the beautiful
Cleancut images, drives an eager spurt
Of new adventure vibes – as antics pass’d
Each day felt even better than the last!
Krist went along to Kurt’s, steps thro’ teh door
Yelps, “Dude, gotta listen to this CD,
I’ve just pick’d it up down Dill’s dollar store,”
On came Shocking Blue, electricity
Crackles thro’ Love Buzz – listens, Kurt, in awe,
Then, later that day, at practice, when he
First growl’d that loud riff, gave a simple, “shit
That’s really good, yeah, let’s cover it!”
“Well, who are you,” “Tracey,” “Nice name, I‘m Kurt…”
Sprang up, between them, banterment pacey,
Then came the date, he wore an iron‘d shirt,
She, underneath, hinting something lacy,
Soon, dancing tongues have surg‘d beyond the flirt
To flooding hot-blood realms, chasteless, racy,
Them, by the morning, symbiotic were,
& made the perfect couple, all concur.
Into a studio apartment thrust
Two lives entwin’d, fix’d by her hymen glue;
A place to cook, to sleep, to laugh, to lust,
To live their lives among a mini-zoo:
Four rats, five cats, kurt’s turtles were a must
Two rabbits, & a talking cockatoo;
Kurt’s job to feed the lot, while Tracey spent
Her days at work to pay the endless rent.
Great artists have a knack for anything
Artistic, how Kurt loves to sketch & draw,
& fling acrylic at each new painting,
On backs of old board games, or a thrift store
Canvas; or now wildly ripping-snipping
Images from textbooks’ flesh & gore
& now a portrait of Charlie Manson
Now sculpting some flesh-eating alien!
Sometimes he loved that Shelli hung around,
Other times all he could do was hate her
For being, as the common gossip found,
Such an overbearing dominator,
That like a puppy with a whimper sound
Krist doted on her, always placates her,
While Tracey adores her friend forever –
So that was that, four lives sewn together.
Tracey supports her poet shift-on-shift,
Grateful as cats, happily unemploy’d,
Kurt plugs into bohemia, the drift
Of days, of art, of boozing, unannoy’d
By all the wasted hours of graft & grift
Out-plucking visions from the darkling void
Them given awesome bodies by his art –
As long as on chore-lists he’d ‘made a start!’
Emerg’d an imburgeon’d repertoire,
From dog-ear’d notebooks stain’d with burns & rings,
When all of Pear Street felt his fledgeling star,
Beneath his window passing as he sings
Who stops the second hears, he, Tracey‘s car,
& sprints & dashes thro‘ the list of things
She’d left for him to do, while she’s at work
Else tantrum-slam back in, her way, bezerk!
Dale Crover got a call from Kurt one night,
Who said, “I‘ve got some songs, can you record ‘em?”
On first impressions Dale thought they were tight,
& lets his best abilities accord ‘em
The best sound that he can, a rapid flight
One afternoon thro‘ ten songs, & stor‘d ‘em
For posterity – Downer, Paper Cuts,
& Floyd the Barber, grabbing by the guts!
Endino pass’d along the demo tape
To Jonathan Ponemon of Subpop,
Who, feeling bristles brush & snake his nape.
Found winsome whistle-longs could hardly stop,
Infested by bold earworms, no escape
From each excitement of a heavy drop,
Mulling this band sounds worthy of a deal,
Whose singer’s fate, in shotgun blood, did seal.
One night Kurt sketch‘d his manifesto‘s plot:
To infiltrate the system, trusted, pos’d
As one of them, to slowly start the rot
From deep within an empire, discompos‘d
The chance his parents’ generation got
To change the world, but fluff‘d it, juxtapos‘d
By his era’s eager sincerity –
To do his bit thro’ truth & poetry.
Enthrall’d with love’s minutiae’s growing list
Kurt, to Tracy, says one day, ‘I love you!
I love you coz you are a pacifist,
& all your womanhood is lovely too –
She smiles & hugs him, after they had kiss’d
She heats up his dinner, with a brand new
Microwave, less his girlfriend, more a mum
Unto a royal, spoil’d & pamper’d bum.
Alas, for Dave, he would not fit just right,
& living far away could barely make
Practice enough for Kurt to feel them tight,
Making decisions for the band’s best sake,
A need to practice almost ev’ry night –
A letter sent, & at that selfish wake
Downs beers with Krist who laughs, “Don’t worry man
When things go wrong just make another plan!”
Listening to the Beatles, suddenly
Tracey turns to Kurt, gurns with face confus’d,
Spurtling, you‘ve not written a song for me –
Later, in the bath, while his lover snooz’d
Guitar in hand, chords mov’d in harmony,
Metadialogues, melodies infus’d,
Bas’d upon arguments they’d had a while
Back – well, soppy love songs were not Kurt’s style.
Kurt, Tracey, woke; naked, bathtub-dripping,
Roll’d up a smoke, toke’d once, pass’d on, then flew
Into his jangle-jangle banger, gripping
The room; “I need an easy Friend, I do
With an ear to lend…” with heart-beats skipping
Tracey swoons… “I do think you fit this shoe…”
She smiles, the song was great, he’d done alright
Then laugh’d at, “I can’t see you every night!”
Tick-Dolly-Row, once, & a band call’d Bliss,
The stage had shared, Nirvana still fledgling
Whose drummer ‘was alright,’ Kurt said to Krist;
A mutual acquaintance thought that she’d bring
All parties together – just like a kiss
Between lovers when at first Chad Channing
Jamm’d with the band, & before he knew it,
Was of the sound a part, pulsing through it!
While all the lads look’d on, alarm’d, obtuse,
Kurt turn’d into a modern Don Juan,
Girls clucking for their darling amoureuse
Down at the front, burn Bacchanalian,
As if they’d Soma supp’d, souls cutting loose
Hair spouting up like geysers ‘twards the sun –
Great songs, a killer voice, & sex appeal,
Thought Ponemon, ‘let’s give these lads a deal!’
Seattle‘s central tavern, ‘88,
With Ponemon assured of their merit
& Jack Endino smitten, both must wait
Their main honcho to convince, Bruce Paviit
Whom, hearing Love Buzz, bluster‘d, ‘that was great!
Let‘s make a record, & the disc must have it!‘
That is the single, let’s cut quick the track
Starting Nirvana on our heart’s attack!‘
Love Buzz was nail’d, the response ecstatic,
Tho’ Kurt sulk’d, burden’d, misgivings chronic
Thinking the song better in his attic
When thrashing a heavy supersonic,
But still, vibrant chunks of rock electric
Serves to the public a grungey tonic
Who now want more, an album’s worth
Of bangers waiting for the pangs of birth.
Reciprocal Recording Studios
The sacred site forechosen, like the ground
Where Sparta block’d Persian, whose tape deck glows
With buttons, lights & sliders – storing sound,
Jack Endino goes to work – one who knows
The system inside out, who’d gone & found
The guts of grunge, & as their boat unmoor’d
Nirvana’s album’s ready to record.
Kurt’s secret weapon was his blasting screams
As if stuck fast & drowning in life’s drudge,
His stomach, too, was scratching at the seams,
Hatching internal acid-worms in sludge
To numb the pain, found opiates dull dreams,
Like heroin, the curse that will not budge,
Refus’d to move on like stubborn mule,
Rebranding ‘I’m addicted’, with ‘it’s cool!’
With high-end toms, & a hitty stick-sound,
The snare twyx mid & low-mid frequence tuned,
A full beat kick-drum where the Chas-feet pound,
& sloshy hi-hats like a spurting wound,
With cymbals crashing in the black background
The sound comes at ya like a whale harpoon’d,
But thrashing in the ocean while it lives,
& in whose stark death-song Human sin forgives!
Dissonant punk, with poppy overtones,
To make the people dance a merry fit,
Whose pounding drums, & heavy gee-tah drones,
Create a deep dichotometric grit
Which, counterpoising, spits out microphones
In campfire hooks, minds nibbling, bit-by-bit
Until, each one, remember we, with ease,
Like memories of lovers, overseas.
Ye songs of stunning bonecrunching music,
Heavy, atonal, crushing, bleakness sour’d,
A sonic splurge of watching your car-wreck
Slow-motionly thro’ finger-slits, cower’d
Helpless behind the wheel, claustrophobic
Dreading, rides a rollercoaster, power’d
By mad dynamics, spiteful with harshness –
But cracks of light in Kurt’s darkest darkness.
Now, re-recording PAPER CUTS, the band,
All the time Dale Crover’s drums preferr’d,
Such super-sludgy slog, & understand
If magical then keep it – then they heard
The story of the song – a madman slamm’d
His children in a basement, made them turd
On newspaper sheets, Kurt knew one of ’em,
His dealer’s accomplice, call’d Donovan.
I thought I’d try to find two rhymes for Grunge,
& realise its essence in this song –
It hits you like a barracuda’s lunge,
& leaves flesh quaking like a sumo gong,
Upsoaking blood & sweat into a sponge,
While squeezing drops of poison from the tongue,
Of singers, all across Seattle’s scene,
All ruthless as a guillotining queen!
Endino sat, chain-smoking Winston Lights,
Capturing the burgeoning Pacific
Sound, whose breathless energy sets to rights
The zeitgeist with a scorch’d earth, specific,
Fanbase-pleasing grunginess – loud & tight,
Ominous, unsettling & uncivic –
Tailoring Kurt’s album, to its profit,
Like an unapologetic prophet.
Exhilarating vitriol avails
The final mix, whose caustic abandon,
Whose angst of modern living scrapes it wails,
Whose ominous, & wit-acerbic fun,
Fills ears with dread, as dead, under its nails
Festers the soil of rural washington,
But shot thro’ with moments of staggering
Heartfelt beauty, & boy that boy can sing!
Recording might be over, but then came
Delays on post-production, each edit
Fed thro’ Pavitt’s litmus test; some became
Gospel, others discarded as ‘pure shit!’
& still the album lacks a proper name,
‘Til on a poster Kurt simply found it
Advising junkies “Bleach Your Works”, i.e.
Clean needles curb the spread of HIV.
Kurt seems a member of the legend gang,
Those master singers, & a brother bard,
Who knew just how to tune a guitar’s twang,
To hypnotise those hellhounds in the yard,
Who’ll croon with tramps ancestral, as he sang
Each word the turning of a tarot card,
Shall energize & mystify us, inspire
Our souls like faces shining by a fire.
The record steady sells – spits, claws its worth
Into our modern music taste ferment,
Help‘d on by English critics at the birth
Quoth NME, “this is the biggest, bent
& baddest sound Sub Pop did yet unearth
So far…” – says Kurt “why don‘t we circumvent
America, like Jimi did, & tour
Europa, for to elevate us more!“
The band were met by a man nam’d Murdo
From the Edinburgh band, the Cateran,
Who, collecting wide-eye’d lads at Heathrow,
Bundl’d them all in the back of his van
& drove them to their digs at Pimlico,
A manky flat, but laid on by a fan
For free, who’d Love Buzz bought, loving the band,
& welcomes likely lads to Limeyland!
Kurt could not help reflecting on that night
When Jimi Hendrix first play’d London Town,
Unknown back home, but England sets alight,
With licks so hot they burnt the Sixties down;
Now he was here, the next Seattlite
Ambitioning to fix a victor’s crown
Upon his head, the one great songsmiths don,
When recognis’d as king by ev’ryone.
They disappear’d into the Underground
That sunders London with its tentacles,
Upon the Circle line went round & round;
Bitters, draining, one-by-one, in bottles,
On surfacing one random stop they found
A cool old English pub, jukebox, pool tables,
Joking, smoking, bantering with locals,
While shrieking out Johnny Rotten’s vocals.
I took a bus to Manchester to see
This band, this mystery this Kurt Cobain,
I met him in the dunny, shared a pee,
& offered him a sniffle of cocaine,
“I am alive,“ I said, “in poetry!“
He asked me there & then, outright, explain,
This statement in my best, glorious rhyme,
“Not now,“ said I, “perhaps another time.“
After the gig, half-way down an alley
I pass‘d a lass, head-turn‘d towards her friend,
Who said, “what are you on about, Sally,
I span around, & watch‘d them reach the end,
Then disappear – behind me a scally
Chirps, “that gig was fucking ace, what a blend
Of lyrics & distortion – what say you…
“That girl, I sens‘d she was my soul mate true.“
& so I dash‘d on down that cobbl’d lane
But seem’d she gone forever! Cursing fate,
I found that Scally by me yet again.,
Chewing his face off, saying, “Ee-ya, mate,
“I‘ve got some pills at home my name is Wayne,
I‘ve just bought Bleach, I think dem tunes are great,
Fancy a dance at mine, I‘ve got skunk too!“
I flash‘d a smile, “of course I fucking do!“
Kurt‘s youthtime now has ended, one hundred
Fifty stanzas of ottava rima
Have from this pen unfolded, some thunder‘d
In scribbling hurricanes, some star-streamer,
Dangling words in drips, while others plunder‘d
From Scottish glens, where my lucid dreamer
Stroll’d, straddling consciousness – how words did flow!
Preaching two cantos – Bleach, In Utero!
(SR) 8: The Rose Goes South
THE ROSE GOES SOUTH
Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea
Lord Byron
IN AEREO
CAMPALDINO
CASALINO
VAGABONDO
PAROLA ITALIANA PREFERITA
9 AD
REQUIM @ CASINO
MEMORIUM TO THE PASSAGE OF TIME
BELOW SCOPELLO
ON PRONUNCIATION OF THE MALTESE
OLD MAN RUMINATES ON A STOOL
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO GAUCI’S HONEYMOON
HATS OFF TO EDWARD LEAR
FAREWELL TO MALTA
IN AEREO
Tis a succulent day to be soaring
Over Sussex & her summer-bronz’d fields,
Her towns & cities shaped like knitted shields,
Then… over the Channel’s kitchen flooring.
Old Antwerp passes under in a ring,
With Amsterdam a pleasure to behold,
Huge cumuli glide under glinting gold,
As plain’d Europa trundles under wing.
From cloudy masses rank & file emerge
In polka dot procession to the Alps,
Stones tumble upwards ‘til their snowy scalps
Upstrain to touch us with a granite surge,
When… all at once… our spirits flurry free
Above the orange rooves of Italy!
CAMPALDINO
Across the sheer Consuma Pass the Papal Guelfs did steer
To permeate the Poppi plain, the Ghibellines appear,
Noble Swabian lineage with rival war ensigns,
Amplified by Catenaian Alps & spangling Apennines;
The sun had risen muggy on Saint Barnabas’s day,
Where over Verna, Francis of Assisi’s hands did pray,
Dante Alighieri, far beyond his metaphors,
Stood in the first line of the Guelfs, the fearless Feditors,
Facing the dancing enemy, & yes he was afraid
Protected by Apollo many mortal parries made
As now the Pavesari wrap around the fading foe
Who drop their shields & fled the field, splashing thro’ the Arno,
The Guelfs did claim a victory & furthermore the pride
‘Come Dante,’ said Boccacio, ‘Let us to Florence ride!’
CASALINO
Pui tranquilo del mormorio della rosa,
La piazza di Pratovecchia,
Betlemme-gemellare, rifugio una villagio dolce,
Amosso calmo il pastori chiamato Casalino –
Ecco Dante meditato il suo cante cinque,
Lacrime versate per Paulo & Francesco,
Mescolato con il fiumicello giovane del’Arno,
Scorando a tutta la riva d’Italia –
Un posto per consevara la poesia,
Dove les suore sacreto spezzanno il pane antico,
La, convoco presso il gruniri dei chingialo selvaggi,
Dentro un bosco dove un piede ha calpestato raramente,
Non vita ne storia auiteranno la mia arte,
Solo musica fragrante del cuore delal valle.
VAGABONDO
Solo, sono stato viaggio,
Dalle complessite senza vita,
Di villagio a villagio,
Panarami di vista a vista –
Oh! sospiri del Viarregio,
Oh! scheletro catta di Calcata,
Solo, sono stato viaggio,
Dalle complessite senza vita.
Stelle quando sono campaggio,
Pensiero sulla passagio,
Oh! isola balerno di Ponza,
Oh! piazza confortolvelmente,
Oh! bellaza di Portovenere,
Oh! Non complicato mezza-vita!
9 AD
Thro’ the Teutoburger Wald went the arms of Varius
Arminius of the Cherusci made his excuses
& soon a ghoulish baritas surrounds the sons of Mars
Chaunting for Lord Tuisto & Odin amidst the stars
The chiefs fighting for victory, companions for their chief
They set out all for slaughter, no quarter & no relief
A black storm rages all around the javelins & spears
The fallen Goths are carried off to dry the widow tears
Three days of carnage rampant in the dark & marshy wood
The roman gen’ral cuts his throat & gurgles on the blood
Some men cast off their armour & await the lethal blow
Only a lucky few would safely reach the Rhine’s wide flow
The news reaches Augustus, flying thro grieving regions;
“O Quintillius Varius, give me back my legions!”
REQUIEM @ CASSINO
My child, how did you come her under the western Gloom, you that are stil alive
Oddyssey Book XI
On the day my mother died I went up to Cassino,
O! Tis a place of death if ever there was one my friend,
For six hard months the Gustav Line murder’d thro’ an empire,
& the Poles who fought for Warsaw in a country far away;
In the day’s fading lights the abbey gleam’d ethereal,
Into a dark cathedral driving on my stumbling steps,
I found two shawl’d believers praying at an altar,
Backs to a tumbling organ by goblins hewn I’m sure),
Kneeling before a painting of a young Mother Mary,
Who posed uncanny likeness to my mother when she young,
Syrupy emotions flooded thro’ me, wailing for an outlet,
& as the ladies left I knelt & pray’d for that sweet darling
Who brought me up into this world, & gladsome I am for it
Writing this sonnet ‘neath the moon, in this still mountain air.
MEMORIUM TO THE PASSAGE OF TIME
Shelley has somehow made my library
& instantly I muse back to that time,
Far from these heady days in Sicily,
When Tuscany enthubulised my rhyme,
Remembering that perfect Pisan clime
When Kapitano drank thro our brief fling
By Arno side, & as I sang sublime
He pluck’d our lira like a beggar-king,
Time passes sweet siestas, composing
Pretences of dining with Byron’s crew,
Now summer rises from the finest spring
& life has dealt me dreams becoming true,
Wintering in Sicily’s hinterland,
A palace & a pen in either hand.
BELOW SCOPELLO
To become, to belong, bohemian,
So many miles my smitten songsmith sent,
Striving for prospects paradesean
In an immortal moment’s monument –
Time carves us this vista Tyrennean,
Tranquilo corner of a continent,
To become, to belong, bohemian,
So many miles my smitten songsmith sent.
This rocky cove, this tower, this mountain,
Blend in an often prophesied fusion,
Sweet Sicily! Sate silent & content,
Recently have my dreams increasing seen
Visions of places I had never been,
Where I should sit a songsmith & invent.
ON PRONUNCIATION OF THE MALTESE
Its going to be rather difficult to explain
How to say ‘Mriehel,’ but I’ll make the attempt;
The Maltese would expect the best of me
Being such an industrious people
In the historical face of historical adversity!
Please, purse your lips first, as if to say Mgarr,
Extending the ‘M’, as if you had just tasted
A particularly tasty pea pastizzi pastry;
The next three letters sounds like starting ‘retails,’
But dig the vowel out, then change the pitch –
Higher or lower, I’m not sure it matters much;
Now to the place of rattling chains & wails
Where dwells the Devil & dreams the witch,
Then say the word out loud, with softling touch…
OLD MAN RUMINATES ON A STOOL
Picking tomatoes was damn’d hard work,
& still is for the Syrian immigrants,
While the young bucks of Malta
Strut around in their well-cut suits,
Chasing senorinas dripping in gold
No longer carrying the only pair
Of shoes they’ll ever own, to & from Valetta!
He remembers saving a threppenny bit,
& lending it to his desperate mother
So she could grumble thro’ tombola,
Until “FATTA!”, under the statue,
Watching Karena’s white hair blowing,
While checking the winning numbers,
Mixing his whiskey with ruġġata.
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO GAUCI’S HONEYMOON
Sat under dust for centuries unthumb’d,
I waited, the librarian came oer,
Books clutching, chose at random from a store
Of poetry, by Maltese bards once humm’d;
In half-a-line mine artist heart benumb’d;
An unheard songbird from unearthly shore
Who charms like Keats, whose verses, without flaw
Declare swan spirit, but by time down-dumb’d.
Proclaim the lovely thing that never dies!
The month-long song that sounds the paean too,
By pearl’d effusions dark, soft, velvet hair
Oer hot face streams; her skyswept, bridal eyes
Dazzl’d by Salvatore’s outpouring
In the southern breezes, & adoring!
HATS OFF TO EDWARD LEAR
I saw on Gozo one of nature’s shows;
Charge waves wind-heaving, exploding on rocks,
Leaving weeping waterfalls, til re-rose
Wide swirls of foam on pulsing aftershocks.
I sit in silence as in yesteryear
An English painter rais’d his spectacles,
With trusted monocle on scenes did peer,
Studying, slowly, colour’d opticals.
This is his pomskizillious coastline,
Raw beauties took to heart in ‘sixty-five,
For him the canvas &, for me, the line!
Composing moments magical, alive!
Our English arts belong like this abroad,
Gales watching strike Mgarr’s ix-Xihi fjord.
FAREWELL TO MALTA
Before the burdensome bonanza of my life
Heads griffin east to shake pagoda trees,
If I put my hand to the floor of Malta
I can feel the heartbeat of the World!
Farewell to the one little shop in Manikata!
Farewell ye fabulous fescoes of Hal Millieri!
Auf Weidersehen Tunna Micheli, Adio Axiaq Cutajar!
Goodbye you cool Gianpulan groove gardens!
Fare thee well the smell of pine upon Bajda’s lofty ridge!
Saħħa, at last, ye pedestrian priority strips!
Goodbye to the stray gatti of the Argotti’s golden landscape,
Adieu thou godly facade of the Auberge de Castille!
Au Revoir ye marble-mute saints in the niches of Rabat!
Goodbye My Goddess! My Malta! My Gozo! My Muse!
(SR) MARETTIMO
ON
a
TOUR
of the
SICILIAN
ISLAND
of
MARETTIMO
Il mio giro di un’isola bella
L’isola alta e frastagliata di Marettimo, nella mente dello scrittore, ha svolto il ruolo di Itaca, anche se, come ho detto, quando sono necessari dettagli, vengono presi da Trapani e dal monte Erice.
Samuel Butler
Uno
Sicilia sublime
Cuore di oceano antico
Cucina di cultura
Animato Trapani
Smeraldo del Mediterraneo
Delizia di pescatori
L’onde riflettono il sole
Marettimo splendida estensione
La gente si avvicina al porto
Odore di pane cotto al forno
Caldi panini riempiono la mia borsa
Pizza per prima colazione
Galleria d’alberi
Gli uccelli cantano dolcezza
Pietroso paesaggio sale ripido
Gioco di rocce irregolare
Punta Bassano
Crocifisso del pescatore morto
Due
Si alzano i gradini del drago
Serpente zigzaga attraverso il paesaggio
Pini affollano la Carcaredda
Ado alla spiaggia
Saltando un masso dopo l’altro
Fino ad una baia aecuta
Roccia di rosa e marmo
Geologia dilettante
Acquaforte di tempo profondo
Scalo la Spalmatore
Sopra, un altro pianeta,
Oh! Quando il nostro mondo era giovane?
Suonospacca il silenzio
Aviogetto Italiano
Curve attraverso le scene
Pace, poiche la mia anima,
Questo momento purifica,
Canta per la Sicilia
Tres
Discendendo con il giorno
Da questa cresta d’edera
Crreo valanghe minuscole
Orrizonte rosa
Mare inghiotte il sole rosso
Stella di sera che si alza
Pericolosa passaeggiata
I Gabbiani molestano
Una barca da pesca sul mare
Vecchio Castello Spagnolo
Sella il dorso di una tartaruga
Gemiti fanno eco dalla sua prigione
Stelle cominciano il loro regno
Capre fuggono al mio passaggio
Scorto la barca al paese
Nel bar della piazza animato
Leggo ad alta voce la mia poesia
Questo giro di un’isola bella
(SR) 9: Costa Degli Dei
COSTA DEGLI DEI
The old & the young alike have turned couch potatoes – glued to the idiot box – overnight
Riyan Ramanath
ARRIVO
Calliope! Calabria!
Oggi sono il nemico acerrimo dei versi insipidi
Il capo bardo degli iperborei
Curatore eletto della gelida tomba di Saturno
Io son l’Italia e l’Italia sono io
Al culmine delle mie capacità di poeta
Italia! Vengo da te!
Lasciami domare le tue muse più selvagge
Illuminare le catacombe pagane
Lascia che me diverta nella tua lingua aulica
Sono all’apice delle mie abilita di poeta
l’Italiano è la lingua più poetica
Dalla bocca di Dante stesso
Ma se Dante avesse incontrato Demostene
Allora, quanto più gloriosa sarebbe
REGGIO
Mi svegliai all’alba su una sporgenza di boscaglia collinare
E avevo ragione su quel debole odore di merda di cane
Attraverso i vapori mattutini un panorama ombroso
L’insurrezione dello stretto di Messina e della Sicilia
Poi, assaporando la rinascita di sapori freschi
Mentre le belle donne d’Italia dormono ancora
Per entrare nel set di un barista star del cinema
Trangugio il primo cappuccino obbligatorio;
Come quando l’alfiere dell’undicesima legione
Saltando nelle onde britanniche, invocando gli dei
Mi spruzzo con cornucopie di prelibatezze calabresi
Deliziami e stupiscimi con l’eleganza rustica
Ne ho sentito solo voci nei vecchi libri
Eri un sogno per me e ora sei reale
LA RICERCA
Nella squisita dolcezza della quiete
L’istruzione silenziosa del vino che affonda nella psiche
Gettare i pensieri nei venti volubili dei sogni
Rannicchiato nella mia tenda mi addormento
Riscaldato da questo meraviglioso vino calabrese
Tropea non mi piace
Troppi turisti, troppe cipolle rosse
Decido subito di partire per l’entroterra
Osservare le somiglianze tra due testi
Un’oscura tragedia sacra della regione
L’unica produzione di Serafino de Salandra
E il famoso poema epico inglese di John Milton
Adam caduto, Il paradiso perduto,
Qualunque sia la verità, spero che questo tour la trovi!
TRISOLINA
Inizio la mia giornata immaginando gli schiavi di Trisolina
Da tutte le parti dell’impero, che si preoccupano di me!
Pane, salame piccante e vino rosso locale
Il mio sangue va bene, ma il sangue è ancora più fine
Se mescolato con vino pesante! Un momento importante
La tenda è alzata e spuntano scenari spettacolari
Dal doloroso sollevamento del terreno tettonico
Antichi terrazzamenti fiancheggiano i pendii della valle
Stavo sulla linea di faglia tettonica
Tra l’Africa e l’Europa, quando i gemiti selvaggi
Formarono gole mozzafiato
Dove le case distrutte furono distrutte e abbandonate
Lasciati agli spazzini di tutta la Calabria
Pentedattilo, Papasidero & Papilglionti.
LE ROVENE
Ecco una parvenza di silenzio
A parte le api, le mosche e il cinguettio degli uccelli canori
& brezze che trasportano i sogni di Petrarca e Mazzoni;
Spavento una donna che raccoglie rami
Spiega che ero in campeggio, lei è seccata
Mi dice che avrei dovuto dirglielo ieri sera
E avrei potuto unirmi alla sua famiglia alla fattoria;
Nella città in rovina la fontana funziona ancora
Rinfrescato dentro e fuori, un cagnolino si precipita fuori
Ringhiando alla vecchia della porta accanto
Io dico che non c’è problema, lei dice che c’è
Che il cane la fa impazzire con il suo abbaiare
Entrando nei fischi e nei fruscii senza tempo della natura
Lascio quei vicini alle loro infinite dispute!
CAPPUCINO
Entro al bar a colazione
Uomini muscolosi che stringono ditali di caffè denso
Turn è all’unisono, stordito dall’istinto
Un uomo dalla carnagione scura, forse arabo
Inizia il rito, il rito dell’autoaffermazione
Di indurre la calma nella prosperità
Ospitalità forse, e dico, non proprio in queste parole
Sono un cavallo dei deserti del Nord Africa,
Allevato in una scuderia inglese,
A caccia della vittoria nel Palio di Siena
E soprattutto sono un poeta
E vorrei continuare il mio viaggio in pace
E posso avere un cappuccino, per favore?
E posso caricare il mio telefono qui, grazie mille
LA BELLEZZA
Gli usignoli cantavano prima che il Buddha parlasse
E mi sono svegliato in Italia una mattina
Il suono degli uccelli e l’odore della lavanda
Sul sito di una villa romana, sorridente…
…aspetto l’autobus per mezzogiorno
Compro le banane dal furgone della frutta
Una donna calabrese mi fissa
Occhi voluttuosi, capelli lunghi e ricci
Trecce minoiche, labbra da baciare
Oggi irraggiungibile – lungo slalom verso la costa
All’improvviso emergono miglia sopra quelle pianur
Avevo scalato da ieri, in salita fino in fondo,
Tetti arancioni che ricoprono la ricca terra verde
Come le foglie d’autunno, andiamo girando verso il basso
THE EXPLORER
I do not fear the rustic knife
I am not afraid of the darker cantons
To all the world’s fieldworkers – I salute you
But not the wicked soil-owners – I condemn you!
Today I am fascinated by Fascism
Let Italy be more temporiz’d than Il Duce,
Reflecting, only, his better parts!
Let me explore these splendid territories
& in my sonnets make a train’d report
Possessing tendencies to innovate
Which aided Ariosto’s surpassing of Homer
Hoping for a reception of pure intentions
As when Cytheris saw those eclogues of Virgil
Which captivated Cicero as the second hope of Rome!
PIZZO
Godlike on the Coast of the Gods
Invigorated by the promise of an amazing today
I am a beetle on the road, hacking thro’ Calabria
Creeping onwards under my synthetic carapace
But sometimes on a bus – I am, from one, disgorg’d
On the traffic heavy edge of Vibo Valentina –
Along the coast Pizzo’s rock, encrusted in sea-salt
Promises Italy in her purest form
A maze of streets & steep up-rising places
Bushy-hair’d Luna from Manfredonia
Preaching brave Murat’s murder in this place
Hand on his heart, barking his last orders
Open fire! Twelve heart-aim’d musketballs,
Dropp’d him like a silk handkerchief!
GARIBALDI
By the crystalline waters of the Coast of Gods,
I have a mortal thirst, stumble on a fountain
By shade & relaxation on chairs of pallets
Quenching my drought by proud & polished plaque;
“Garibaldi della briganta Orsino
Trovarona fescia & ristora”
Ah – Garibaldi – the glue of Italy!
Whose faults merely defects of your virtues
Whose voice halted forests of spiky lances
Ruthlessly trampling truceless regions
Here, stirr’d by your soul to the war cry
How the people of Pizzo applauded you…
“Accoglienti che il circondo
Di afetto al grido de viva Italia”
WALKING
After several delicious pinches of aqua vitae
Gasping with joy in the yawning gap of time,
Approaching the climactic resolution
Of my spiritual & artistic quest
I have come to Calabria; mountain, sea & sky,
& return to your road, my poet’s path
Reaching the edge of a town of high vantage
Can see exactly where I’m supposed to be going
Long yellow line of sand pointing to Lamezia
Hanging on happy hills, I set foot forth
Following long roads – flat, uninspiring,
But testing my stamina & mental resolve,
A game of survival, making sweetest moments
All that more sweet, feet springing over tarmac.
REFRESHMENTS
I am an Englishman, would rather lose
A battleship than a game of cricket,
But I simply adore the way Italian men –
Botticelli painting Venus in an Oyster,
Bertolucci ruminating in his bedroom,
Stradivarus carving curves in his busy workshop –
Swagger off smug-like after buying ice cream,
Like they’d just finally found the answer
To the meaning of life – I saw it happen
More than once at the Nopeto tourist village,
The super-relaxing gelateria ‘Enrico’,
Whose red-haired waitress rare in italy
Delights me, while in the shade I’m drinking beer
Chewing on the day, savouring its many flavours.
SUNSET
O! What a thunderously wondrous facade
Is our planetary day – sunset is coming
A long stretch of sand fring’d by forest
Heavy sandwalking, seawaves talk in melodies
Sand scouts attacking the inside of my trainers
I have a litre of water, but no food
I’ll survive – river gouges trenches thro’ sand
I take off my shoes, wade knee-deep
Climb the far bank like the black sands of Iwo Jima
Then settle, set up camp, being a mile from humanity
I swim & wash, then wrap my dripping skin
In a warm blanket of Calabrian air
Sky, glimmering with sunset, possess’d by Saharan dust
Restitches my heartloss’s many pick’d-at scars!
NIGHTFALL
Grasping for a fondling of the stars
I raise towards the heavens these reverent arms
Seeking redemption in a moony universe
Eternally consum’d by the need to create
Enjoying my poet’s right to roam the world
I stand before you all a naked man
Tainted by spasmodic unruliness
As any gutter wretch from too much wine
But am actually, obstinately, one of the poets
You will find us living somewhere among you
They will look a lot like you & me
But if you were to peel back their eyes
You would see creation gurgling like a baby
You would see the inexpressible express’d!
(SR) LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS
Acorn – immortality
Acynthus – artistic
Aloe – grief
Ambrosia – love returned
Amethyst – admiration
Angelica – inspiration
Angrec – finer arts
Apple – temptation
Ash Tree – grandeur
Asphodel – my regrets follow you to the grave
Basil – hatred
Bay Rose – beware
Bay Wreath – record of merit
Begonia – dark thoughts
Belladonna – silence
Black Bryony – be my support
Bluebell – humility
Broken Straw – a broken contract
Burnet – merry heart
Butterfly Weeds – let me go
Cammomile – energy in adversity
Carnation, red – alas for my poor heart
Candytuft – indifference
Carnation, striped – refusal
Cedar Leaf – I live for thee
Celandine – joys to come
Centauria – felicity
Cherry Blossom – good education
Clematis – mental beauty
Cobea – gossip
Convolvulus – a bond
Cornflower – refinement
Cornpoppy – consolation
Crocus, saffron – mirth
Crocus, spring -youthful gladness
Cudwed – never ceasing remembrance
Daisy, marguerite – a token
Daisy, mountain – innocence
Daisy, wylde – I share your feelings
Eglantine – poetry
Eidelweiss – noble courage
Feverfew – protection
Fig – argument
Four Leaf Clover – be mine
Forget-Me-Not – true love
Forsythia – anticipation
Fresia – trust
Furze – enduring affection
Garlic – strength
Gentle balm – pleasantry
Guelder Rose – old age
Helenium – tears
Hollyshock – ambition
Honey Flower – love sweet & secret
Imperial Lily – majesty
Indian Cress – warlike trophy
Ipomaca – I attach myself to you
Iris – eloquence
Judas Tree – betrayal
Justicia – perfection of female beauty
Laurel – ambition
Lilac, white – youthful innocence
Lily-of-the Valley – return of happiness
Linnea – I wish we were together
Locust Tree – affection beyond the grave
Magnolia – love of nature
Meadow Saffron – grown old
Monkshood – Beware a deadly foe is near
Michaelmas Daisy – farewell
Milkwort – hermitage
Mint – virtue
Myrtle – disciline
Oleander – Take caution
Orange Blossoms – bridal festivities
Orchis – a belle
Pansy – a thought
Pea – an appointed meeting
Peach Blossom – I am your captive
Poppy – eternal sleep
Purple Columbine – resolve to win
Purple Lilac – first emotions of love
Red Catchfly – youthful love
Rose, black – death
Rose, blue – mystery
Rose, light-pink – sympathy
Rose, red – love
Rose, silver – sonnetry
Rue – disdain
Stephanotis – desire to travel
Sweet Basil – good wishes
Syringa – memory
Thistle – austerity
Thyme – activity
Tulip, red – declaration of love
Tulip, variegated – beautiful eyes
Tulip, yellow – hopelessness
Veronica – fidelity
Violets, blue – faithfulness
Weeping Willow – grief
Windflower Anemone – foresaken
Wylde Tansy – I declare war against you
Zephyr Flowers – expectation
Aglio – forza
Agrifolgio Scossa – ambizione
Ametista – ammirazione
Angreco – belle arti
Aquilegia Viola – risoluzione vincere
Chamomile – energia contro avversita
Cilegio – buon educazione
Clematis – mentale bellaza
Corona d’Allora – ricordo di merito
Dolce Basilico – cordiali saluti
Garofano Righe – rifiuto
Giglio Imperiale – maesta
Indiano Crescione – guerriero trofeo
Menta – virtu
Orchidea – belleza
Zeffi Fiore – aspettativa
National Flowers
Bangladesh – White Water Lily
Sicily- Carnation
Cyprus – Rose
Denmark – Marguerite Daisy
Egypt – Egyptian Lotus
England – Rose
Estonia – Cornflower
Finland – Lily-of-the-Valley
France – Iris
Germany – Centauria
Greece – Bear’s Breech
Holland – Tulip
India – Banyan Tree
Indonesia – Pink Moth Orchid
Italy – Poppy
Latvia – Wilde daisy
Lithania – Rue
Maldives – Rose
Norway – Purple Heather
Poland – Cornpoppy
Portugal – Lavender
Russia – Cammomile
Scotland – Thistle
Sri Lanka – Nil Manel
Sweden – Linnea
Thailand – Rachapruek
THE CATS OF CALCATA
Being an account of two cats of Calcata who communicate upon a romantic level by using the secret Language of the Flowers. Upon falling in love as kittens, then getting married, their tranquility is disturbed by the arrival of a young, handsome tom from the nearby town of Falaria. The Wife becomes completely enamored of him, begins an affair & seeks a divorce. Her husband challengers the tom to a duel, but is left second bested & bleeding. His wife sees this & realizes her true love for her husband – but it is too late, for in a fit of jealousy the husband murders her. He instantly shows the greatest remorse, burying his wife at the spot where she died…
Lazing through days of Italy,
O life of lovely hours!
The soft wine & festivity,
The sunshine & tranquility
Where Street Cats speak, eloquently,
The Language of the Flowers.
There is a place where you must go
To hear the street-cat patter;
Where sweet Rondini swoop & show,
The river glistens far below
A maze of streets, then you will know
The magic of Calcata.
Upon a soft & starry night
Two kittens kiss’d all hazy;
They pluck’d two Lilacs flushing bright,
Purple for her, for him pure White,
Love blossoming from first sweet sight,
Fresh as a Mountain Daisy.
Young lovers grew, through every scene
The cute Red Catchfly carried;
Where Spring Crocuses grow serene
& Orange Blossoms speckle green,
Amidst the gentle Celandine
They were forever married!
Home was a mountain theatre
Sunshine rises to mild purrs –
Each day they found Veronica,
Blue Violets & Ambrosia,
For to bind them all together
On a bed of felted Furze.
Then from Falaria there came
The cat with eyes a-dapple;
In her heart grew the strangest flame
Burning so brightly, to her shame,
With Amethyst he won her name
& left for her an Apple.
They dallied by the old river
Where grow the Four-Leaf Clovers;
He plucked the wylde Justicia
This, with Peach Blossom, gave to her,
By the brightest Honey Flower
Became, they, tender lovers.
The husband woke that cloudy night,
Went out all wrack’d with worry;
Grew frantic thro’ the gloomy light,
‘Til shone the moon full beaming bright,
No man should suffer such a sight
Underneath the Judas Tree.
Biting a fig between his teeth,
Clutching a Red Carnation;
He gave to her the Cedar Leaf,
But she, to his own disbelief,
Wraps Butterfly Weeds in a wreath
& bids for separation.
The husband’s wounded heart wants war,
Throws down the cruel Wylde Tansy;
The piazza, as was the law,
Saw scratch & screech & bite & claw –
As lost he left, limping by paw,
From heaven fell a Pansy.
To see her first love lose the fray,
By an arrow her heart shot!
She found a fresh straw from the hay,
A dozen Red Tulips at play,
Wove them into a lush bouquet
With a fresh Forget-Me-Not.
Pressing Basil into a wound,
Chewing fresh Begonia;
He stood up with a hissing sound,
Sore paws the pretty rooftops pound,
Upon a wall his sweetheart found
& push’d her to the murder!
Distraught, he dash’d to where she fell,
& wept for the tragedy,
He kiss’d & kiss’d the spirit’s shell,
He cloak’d ith Cudweed, as tears swell,
He placed a little Asphodel
‘Neath the sea-green Locust Tree.
So, if you ever take the care
To visit fair Calcata,
Go to the walls the street cats share
& pause a while to look down there,
Where you should see, come really stare,
A grave Red Roses flatter.
LA PRINCIPESSA DEL FALCO
Si tratta del resoconto di una gara in cui i principi di cinque paesi tentano di conquistare l’affetto della principessa con i falchi del re di Sicilia. Il torneo si tiene sul Monte Falcano, che domina l’isola di Marettimo, e uno a uno vengono sbaragliati, prima attraverso la loro personalità, poi la velocità, poi l’abilità nella caccia. Infine, il duello tra i principi di Portogallo e Cipro, in cui il falcone portoghese trionfa, vince la principessa e pianta il suo fiore nazionale sull’isola per i posteri – o come la lavanda arrivò sull’isola di Marettimo
C’e una isola che devi conoscere
Di sole e mare e acquazzoni
Chiamata meravigliosa Marettimo
Dove Homer ha meditato molto tempo fa
E tutte le creature di Dio conoscono
La Lingua dei Fiori
Su quest’isola vive un Re,
Signore dei falconi di Sicilia
La rose d’inverno ricresce ogni primavera
Ha all’interno il suo trono, in un anello,
Pero le aquile hanno ancora paura delle sue ali
Dall’Antartide al mar Baltico
Piu bella davvero di un’Orchidea
Cresciuta come figlia adorata
Quando ha colto blu Clematis
Il Re ha mandato messageri alle montagne
Ai principi reali dei falcone
Invitandoli a corte.
Un bel principe evolato per proporsi
Trasportando un arcobaleno Iris
Poi un altro ha portato la Rosa,
Un altro ha la Lavanda nel suo artiglio
Un altro regala Fondo di Orso
L’ultimo porge Loto d’Egiziano.
Hanno baciato la prinicpessa con un bacetto
E’ l’hanno ricoperta d`ammirazione
Uno con Menta, uno con Angreco,
Uno con Cilegio, uno con Aglio,
Pero’ poi uno con l’Agrifolgio-Scossa
Ha gettato un Garofano-Righe
Il Re ha annunciato un torneo
In mezzo ai fiori di montagna
Le capre hanno squattrinato il loro governo
Gli Asini hanno affrontato la ripida salita,
I gabbiani hanno strillato il loro consenso
E sparso Zeffi-Fiore
La folla si e’ radunata sul versante
Sopra il mare che nuota nello spazio
I principi si e liberato in volo sulla corda
Il Re ha aperto il suo telescopio
Sono stati salvati da una nave
Poi si sono sistemati ad osservare la gara.
Quatro falconi volano come fulmini
Dalle nuvole alla bassa nebbia del mar
Toccano l’albero del ghiozzo
Oltrepassano il Giglio Imperiale e ritorno
La pricipessa saluta! poi all’ultimo
da l’Ametista dai vivaci colori.
Tre principi hanno cacciato per tutto il giorno
Scendono in picchiata con il cacciato
Ognuno riempie un piatto d’argento
Quando il sole ha spirato l’ultimo raggio
La principessa dona al peggior cacciatore
Un piccolo mazzetto di Dolce Basilico
Il Re annuncia che era tempo di pranzare
Messa la cacciagione in un tinello
La lavano con vino che il Re ha salvato
Tutti e due I finalisti hanno trovato un segno
Uno ha colto l’Aquilegia Viola
E l’altro, il suo rivale, Chamomilla.
Due falconi affrontano l’ultima baruffa
Dal Portogallo e da Cipro
L’oscurita della sera consuma il giorno
Asini ragliano alla luna
La principessa trema dal freddo
Avvolta da un caldo Indiano Crescione
I due principi che hanno lottato nel cielo
Colpendosi con le ali e il becco con fiero aspetto
Si bloccanno e cadono dall’alto
Uno va ad urtare l’acqua,
Rirtorna a ricevere, con un sospiro,
La Corona d’Alloro intorno al suo collo
Il principe di Portogallo ha vinto
Il Garofano della sua principessa
In regola con le leggi della falconeria
Il Re ha abbracciato il suo futuro figlio
Qui ha piantato il suo fiore
Che si mescola con la vegetazione
Cosi, se avrai il tempo
Di visitare Monte Falcone
Azzardando un po’ di alpinismo
Fra mare e Sicilia sublime
Potrai vedere che con la rima dei poeti
Cresce la lussureggiante Lavanda.
THE CASTLE OF TRANQUEBAR
Being an account of a the great Tsu-na-mi that shook the south-eastern portions of the globe at the start of the twenty-first century. The scene is the old Danish colony of Tranquebar, in the land of the Indian Tamils, in which place a castle is used as protection against those infernal waves. The leading protaganist of the tale is a brightly intelligent parrot, who leads the animals of the locality to safety.
If you should ever deck a mast
& tack for the eastern star,
There is a place to take repast,
Besides the ocean’s vista vast,
Stood tough enough for any blast,
The Castle of Tranquebar.
Our story starts not long ago,
The Ocean growning angry,
& conjuring a global show,
She struck the land a mortal blow,
Being the wave we all now know
O terrible Tsu-Na-Mi!
That mighty rush, ten meters tall,
Struck in the early morning,
The lush Thai beaches first to fall,
Where whales watch’d on with dire appall,
& join’d their chorus in a call
& gave the world a warning.
The music of that newsy throng
More beautiful than Handel;
For many leagues it flew along,
Few understood its ancient tongue,
But one seabird had heard their song
Sung by the Coromandel.
She was a parrot, blue & green,
There was no parrot smarter;
A hundred summers had she seen,
& knew this day could only mean
Waves furious, for she had been
A witness at Sumatra.
She knew of misty tidal wave
& old Poseidon’s powers,
So flew to land so she could save
Her fellow creatures from the grave,
Her only tool that voice God gave,
‘The Language of the Flowers.’
The parrot pluck’d from out the ground
Lush Monkshood & Bay Roses,
As Oleander then was found
He spread its petals wide around,
As closer drew the awful sound
Of thunder as it closes.
All in a jungle’s clattering
The animals did scatter,
The monkey’s gan their chattering,
Thepilets pitter-pattering,
As sun-idylls were shattering
Whatever was the matter?
From greening glades to village street
Th’unpanicking parrot flew,
Cool-headed, truly, in the heat,
Trailing Forsythia from feet,
He made his warning-call complete
With feather-white Feverfew.
As animals form Noahan crowd
The elephants huff’d & puff’d,
The cattle battl’d on unbow’d,
With cats & dogs & donkeys loud,
But peacocks acted very proud,
Bedding down in Candytuft.
Our hero reach’d that grand fortress
Beside Thangarambadi,
All pass’d beneath the portcullis
Into the courtyard’s thick-sloped bliss,
& wonder’d what this trouble is
Affecting everybody.
A blast! An earthquake’s aftershock,
As shorewards Tsunami rips,
It lifting tough ships onto rocks,
Freezing forever human clocks,
Blew murdering thro’ proud peacocks
Hid in the Yellow Tulips.
As round the walls an ocean flows,
All the beast dared not to breathe,
As waters fall where waters rose,
Aft’ rounds of spontaneous applause,
Daffodils, Eidelweiss & Furze
Woven neatly to a wreath.
Those flowers tied to parrot’s wing
Happy gratitude flew far,
If life to Tamil coasts ye bring,
Listen to how the monkeys sing,
Of sweet deliverance, praising
The Castle of Tranquebar.
THE ASIAN WREATH
Being an account of the death of the King of the Falcons, consumed with grief upon hearing of the Asian Tsunami. His heir, the Falcon Prince, gathers a number of flowers & sets off for Asia, where in exchange for his own flowers he obtains the national flowers of several countries. He then returns to Sicily & wraps the dead king in the wreath, before dropping the body into the flames of Mount Aetna.
There is a tayle that I must tell,
Tho’ men be disbelieving,
Of when the King of Falcons fell
Into the flamey fields of hell
& in that moment broke a spell
Of misery & grieving.
My tayle begins beneath the sea,
Angry has grown Poseidon,
For poisonous Humanity
Pollutes his kingdom carelessly,
& so he sends the Tsu-Na-Mi
Cantering ‘cross the ocean.
The news brought to Marettimo
& a king sick with disease;
At such sad tidings wept him so,
This news was such a mortal blow,
Once mighty breath began to slow,
Giving out a dying wheeze.
As is the way of ancyent laws
The crown prince of the Falcons
Took up six flowers in his claws,
Transports them to the tragic cause
Of all his weepings & his woes,
Flew far beyond the Balkans.
He drove above the dusty lands
Where God’s flowers rarely grow,
Ranging beyond those desert sands
That change to Ocean’s rippling bands,
Saw clusterings of small islands
In the waters far below.
Mid Maldive pearls, where palm trees grew
To the monkey’s chattering,
Dropt was the beautiful Aloe
Of yellow hue & herbal dew,
In recompense the Falcon drew
A Rose to tie to his wing.
Sri Lanka loom’d, our Falcon fell
For the mountain-scented tea,
Where lions charm’d him with a spell
Of sunny-centred Nil Manel,
He swapp’d one for an Asphodel
Afore soaring ocean free.
He flew the length of India
Where the weird wild banyon grows,
There met the Peacock Emperor
Whom, after tea, flew together,
Our Falcon pluck’d a tail-feather
& won him a Light-Pink Rose.
To Bangladesh he next did come
& the Gangeatic mouth,
Near tygers hid from hunter’s drum
White Water Lilies, quite a sum,
The Falcon dropp’d Helenium,
Pluck’d Sepal & reer’d on south.
He came to Thailand’s golden sand
Where the Rachapruek grows,
Whose pendulous racemes act grand,
For on them elephants won’t stand
But brave are falcons &, as plann’d,
Barter’d was a wild Black Rose.
He flew at last to Borneo
With a Poppy in his claws,
Where Moth Orchids quite pinkly grow,
Guarded by Dragons Komodo,
But opiates all Beasts do slow,
Soon the jungle shook with snores.
The Prince he pluck’d an Orchid free,
His wreath was wound completed;
So on he flew high westerly
Across the sea to Sicily,
Where on an ancient chestnut tree
A thousand falcons seated.
They flew in funerary lines,
Up to Aetna’s steaming rim,
At sunset when the psyche shines
The king dropt in these molten mines,
Wrapt in a wreath, Prince screech’d oer pines
Til that sad, sore day grew dim.
So, if you visit Sicily,
See where Mount Aetna towers,
Think of great Asia’s Tsu-Na-Mi
& how her emblems came to be
Bound in a wreath of poignancy,
For Falcons speak with Flowers.
(SR) 10: Marching on Parnassus
MARCHING ON PARNASSUS
Most joyful let the poet be;
It is through him that all men see
William Ellery Channing
————-
MANIFESTING
Progressing slowly thro’ my younger years
A certain kind of sonnetry appears,
A project on whose ridge I’ll stake my name,
My future reputation, & my fame…
For the Muses be my guide… Ah! but I,
Feel human woes have lain full low my heart
Despondent by the Isles of Misery,
For my true love has from me grown apart,
& so, I thrust myself at poetry!
This art of mine, this state of mind so rare,
Crave I, to pave a path to liberty,
For rhyme is sweet, sublimely tastes, to me,
Like sailing on a lake of mountain air,
So, be it, let us roam, where e’er, my Muse, where e’er.
GRECIA
During the long course of my poethood
My song have I prepar’d for this moment
At last! to Grecia by my Muses sent,
& in my heart I knew they always would!
Upon Italic plateaux I have stood,
Hoping to glimpse her shores thro’ mountains bent
Between the mists, that shuffle innocent
From peak to peak, as only phantoms could!
My poet sails into a classic sea,
Some laurel wreath to fix upon a brow,
Where oranges hang every second tree,
Antiquity seems almost here & now,
As Greece, in rustic beauty, like a bay,
Before us spreads, as breaks the cloudless day.
———
DEPARTING THE SANCTUARY OF OLYMPIA
Until we meet again, Olympia!
When I shall raise my daughter to the height
A toddling flame
& as the morn-pink roses, would show her
The very scene & in the very light
I chose her name
My love, as I sit waiting for a bus
To Tropea or Pirgos, either way,
I think of thee!
Wondering if the future holds for us
A glitter-girl to please us in her play
Our bouncing bee
Who, when she’s sleeping looks as sweet as you
& laughing, me!
——
ON PATRAS BRIDGE
O this is a wild tapestry of something
Walking thro’ a living metaphor
Enlivened by sweet vibrations of birds & cicadae
& in my mouth the taste of oranges
Ticking off kilometres sign-by-sign
By pushing our bodies we must expand our minds
For that is poet’s work, & I love it
I am born of Algerian Boxing Stock
With the blood of Irish Ollamhs in my veins
Drawing closer, ever closer, to Parnassus
Approaching the climactic resolution
Of my spiritual & artistic quest
Knowing intuitively that the history of the past
Entailing knowledges of destinies yet activated!
——
STERCA HELLAS
Where Autumn-tinted peaks rise glorious
I hitch’d a lift, a lorry-load of bales
Whose little houses sing their hearth-side tales
Old stories of this hoary, mountainous
Region, of most hardy handsome hunters
Fed by their ever-fattening females
Where taxidermy, of the arts, prevails
& portraits hang with pride for ancestors!
The Mornou Dam sits like a precious stone,
Heart of a highland chain that god-like rings
This world where only poets dare to chance,
& each of them, I sense, was once a throne
For spirits older than Olympic kings,
Where Cronos dined & Titans loved to dance.
—-
CASTALIAN SPRING
So, this is the heartbeat of poetry,
From holy Parnassus, uprising sheer,
These magi-waters of empyrean,
Down pulse from such a theatre of stone,
& pour all thro’ the depths of my studies,
Where in a sketch I see gargoyle faces –
Hobhouse, perhaps, in Lord Byron’s ‘Life’ –
Who came up here to taste this ancient spring
Upon that very famous ‘Pilgrimage,’
While mine is ended here… I sup the mead,
Faint hint of minerals, revitalis’d,
I swear to all my Muses I shall be
A poet still, & if they ride with me
To Scotland, I shall build them temples there!
—-
ON PARNASSUS
On this mountain of high poetry, & fame,
I remember the night the Muses first came
To me on the silk of a milken moon,
Singing in silence the song of my name
Entwin’d with a destiny… not too soon,
Had truth flutter’d loose from youth’s true cocoon,
& I began to write – all energies within me,
Focused on the page… creation… literature
& my pale breath, O frail spark, forever chang’d!
An intellectual girlfriend at the time saw my glow,
& handed me her edition of the complete WB Yeats,
With eagles rising from fermenting imagination,
Led by the light of a true Gaelic bardsman,
I found I was a poet after all!
—–
ON POETHOOD
Poetry is… the mind’s palatial hall,
Sublime preserver of man’s rare action,
Some daguerreotype of ripen’d soul,
Deep as chess, & vibrant as her dragon,
Bestest way of whistling bestest diction,
Pigmenter of imagine’s consulate,
A perfumed doll, lonely & protean,
Whose priests possess the arcane factor ‘X’,
To be tapp’d so to poetise the dream.
In my prime soul was planted that fair seed,
I was mine own taskmaster… in stages
The self-flagellation of the sages,
This remedy for mental malady,
Form’d, from scatter’d parchments, my first pages.
—-
ON COMPOSITION
The heighten’d awareness of life & sound,
Twin focus of energies light & space,
Let dropsies of absinthe numb the cortex,
Then… a more refin’d moment gathers round,
Most powerful signs of a mind emerge
Up over the ridge with a Zulu surge,
Eying the treasures the love-priest protects
In glittering troves, what should we steal next?
A whisper, “The all-encompassing eye!”
Thus, growing godlike, writings, made codex,
Fill celestial places, sanctify
Melodious mystique-songs enthralling,
Erupting ignean ’til the cooling
Juice settles, sets a rose within its chosen mould.
—-
IN SITU: L’AMFIPARNASSO
As mounting Mount Parnassus has just leant
A certain special magic to the day,
With a two-litre bottle of rose,
My muses, & the sun, & the moment
& I, their poetical passenger,
Orpheus pressing hard against my sail,
Where, yes, it seems his song has form’d a gale,
Why else allude to mythic Thracian bards!
I dream of more fresh roses to be found
Across the world in sites yet to be seen
& of the children I am pois’d to ween
To buy for each an island & a hound;
A terrier for most, but for the best
A spaniel with silver-splashing chest!
—-
THERMOPYLAE
Napoleon, in Amiens, the crown!
Wrested from papal clutches, his own hands
Set steel upon his brow, Corsican clown
No longer, but an emperor of lands!
I came upon a plain of dreams & steam,
A spartan in my body, duty, rhyme,
Where Leonidas & his polis cream,
Defied the best of Persia, in their prime.
On noble Kolonos a monument
Topp’d by a laurel wreath, I gladly felt
That thro’ my Muses it was to me sent –
As I, before Phoenician letters knelt,
Bent round the branch into a perfect ring,
I’ll crown myself, at last, a Poet-King!
—
BEAUTIFUL LIVES
Where are you now with your beautiful lives,
& your beautiful wives, & your horses?
Where are you now with your beautiful knives
As you dine on your beautiful courses?
Leap up & reach for the world-open road
Where the antlers of stags are still living,
Face up to liberty, free up your load
For the chill of the night unforgiving.
On waking & feeling the splendour of morn
We aspire to the day’s new adventure,
Our feet are stll soggy, our clothes are more torn,
With a vision of God in each vista.
Such beautiful music in curses you’ve sworn
As you pace off your beautiful blister!
—
BELOW OLYMPUS
Zeusian eagles hover’d oer the folds
Where I collected firewood, meanwhile
Immers’d in poesy’s pristeen reverie
Of lofty pitch & classical alludes,
The constitutions of a younger vow
Lay fully realiz’d – Olympus rose
Oer tree-green gorge where chaunt I to the gods
Pulses initial to a final form,
An hour of velvet wonder in my life,
Inspirational, talismanical,
Idyllic launchpad of a lofty muse,
Far from the heavings of society,
Wild curry cooking, Castallian mead
Flavour’d by mountain herbs, caring for naught.
—
TO SALLY FROM SAMOTHRAKI
As every kiss Odysseus posess’d,
He, daily, plung’d to Penelope’s breast;
I want to wake beside you every day,
Tell you I love you, ask if you’re OK,
Give you a kiss if you’re going to work,
Or hide if you’re menstrual & going bezerk,
For ye are the one thing I crave here the most,
Camp’d on rocky crest of Aegean coast,
Beneath me the sea-nymphs whisper your name
Above me stars glitter like your eyes aflame –
Now, eagles glide by me as deft as you do,
All these, & me singing reminds me of you,
For you are the music that livens my drumming
Be patient, my love, I am coming…
Mumble Words 