Contained here are any personal poems I've written that I think are worth sharing.
The emperor has his clothes! For long
You’ve languished in boreal brume
Shed, bereft of robe and sarong
Of beauteous hue, but now you bloom,
The spires of your corncob crown
Reborn in the purple of summer,
Verdant and dark with violet down
After almost a sun of slumber,
Crimson eyes covered fair with folds
Of lilac skin, like dusk on dawn,
Fire and phoenix, downy bulbs
Fleckèd with gold, bold sunbeam borne,
Your fingers stretching far and full,
Singing the easter of the sun,
But soon to wester, dim and dull,
Culling cover for shroudless dun.
Oh how I hate the light of spring
And all the sunny songs and rhymes
Picked, pulled, and plucked to make me sing
From my bruised bud burdened with rime.
For like belongs with like, and light
Clashes against my dreary dress,
Picks out those bitty bits of mite
Upon my web worn in duress—
Better for outer to reflect
What burns and blazes bright and bold
Beyond the border of affect
Worn, weary, thirty winters old,
Eaten through full by mirthful moths
Who’ve left their holes of hopeful rage
Within my soul, and now the cloth
Itches and strains against this cage
Of light and love and laughter’s lays
Ringed around my unwholesome heart
Which with bitterness fades and frays
Against desire’s hopeless smart.
Look, friend, along the lying land
At all which teems within,
At mercy of our Mother’s hand
With naught to save their skins.
Gristle to grease the engine grim
Of Mother’s monstrous mirth
For life and death is but her hymn,
Heedless of human worth.
For Mother mills it all to meal
To turn all time her quern,
For unrelenting is her toil
And pity she sore spurns.
She’ll churn our bones and bodies whole
For worms as scattered dust,
She’ll turn our souls as nature’s toll
And you’ll insist she must!
Such a slight change—from snow to sleet—
And oh! how white became so sweet
The face and form of Southby’s streets—
But now the sun has come and gone
And onto Southby’s streets has shone
And now she shuns snow white for dun,
Melting the snow and softened ices
To grim grey sleet and slipp’ry slices
Of hoar ice on untrodden places—
If only such sweet swathings rare
Could put upon streets naked bare
Their gift fair, reft of winter’s wear.
I am of the sea, ‘spite my smart
At your great gales and whipping winds,
For I’ll e’er be—hard hid in heart—
The marlin’s mate and mermaid’s kin,
The seaborn spawn of salt and spray
Bounding below the barren grey
As yet when I shed—switched my skin.
I glanced my glass with look askance
And saw agleam that lightning lance
Flashing in furtive firelight—
A brief and momentary trance
Of fairness surging ‘fore my sight
Only to prance in mocking dance
And bring me back to my black plight.
It’s but a waste to wonder
If nature’d made you stronger
Whether you’d fly as fleet
As those who stroll the street.
For e’en the Zean man
Most zeally blessed by God
Is bound by bonds and brand
To stumble in the sod.
To fashion from mind’s fire
Your own fetterless fate
In vaunt revolt of sire
Is freest, fairest state.
Such pretty petals part the black,
As white as woodland winter snow,
And how with lovely life they lack
They beautify the barren low.
I fumbled feckless in the fireless darkness
Fearing that Flame flickered so dim and dull,
In that enclosèd bud amongst the artless,
Deep in the dark of Zeus’ dreamless lull.
Little did I know of how fir̀e flared,
Thinking my limp lamplight was but the sight
Of searing sun on winter welkin bared,
And not but glimpses—Promethean light!
For now I, lateborn slave of Cybelé,
Blossom and bloom beneath white winter moons
To paint and prophesy with gall and glee
The cruel coming of Promethean noons!
The sun’s streaked stripes of shining light
Smile down upon the bare rose bush,
Bathing the garden gold and bright
And the shorn shrub with winter blush.
The sunlight soft, flickering faint,
Fading and coruscating late
Afternoon, when the sun starts to sigh,
Smudged and smeared on the mirrored eye,
Casting across the corridors
Open under the celestial light,
Shadow-shapes, shade paramours—
False doors of sun’s wide world of sight.
The slab of scintillating silver
Surging and stretching argent fair,
With underlay all gold-dust gilded
Flashing in flecks ‘neath limpid layer—
That silent song of crystalline
Colours and cries of quiet waves,
Some merman’s masterpiece marine
Of singing shapes and shifting shades—
Sung to the soul of a lost age,
Long lost before my soul’d Sea seen.
My fleetwing friend, from whence you’ve come?
For many merry moons have done
E’er since you’ve called upon my home,
I all those lorn lune’s left alone.
And where’d you get that cap and coat,
That hoary hood on head and throat,
Grizzled grey but gallant and gay,
To weather winter’s weary days?
For I can hardly see your leer,
Unclear against this hazy drear
Of naked sky and blurry snow
Mingled and mixed with winter’s glow.
Go fly across the winter’s sky
And not a soul will see by eye
Your hoary head nor argent arm,
No limb except your piebald palm.
It suits you, grizzled veteran,
Boldwing brave of those better men,
Who surge the sky and soar the sea,
On vauntful ventures, fleet and free!
For many merry moons have done
No—how many resplendent suns?—
Since you—mercenary!—found your food
Laid here, given in idle mood.
How life fleet flickers by in but a flash
When the days dodder on, dark, dawdling, dull,
Decades but months, mere months but decades slashed,
Droll dread drearily knocking on the skull.
It burnt but once, that bright, brief ember,
Flaring and faintly flickering,
On that despairing, late September,
When all delay had come to head—
Heedless of those boors’ bickering,
Their contemptuous, snide snickering,
Gleaming in crimson-golden splendour.
The flame whose cinders I now nurse
With bitter zeal and silent daring
In that hidden nook of heart’s purse,
Dimmed and blurred, but brand still bit-burning,
Flashing, flickering, and faintly flaring,
Faring my soul to hope heart-sparing,
While leaving heart’s purse sorely burnt.
But scars and dark are rendered right—
Slights, trials, plights, the degrading grime—
If that sorry sight shone but slight
For just a night in dancing rhyme—
Past and present and future time
All moving, making, proving, waiting,
To burn but once with bright, white light.
O surging spray of stormy bay,
O spirits of the sea,
O gulls and gallant terns unstaid,
O braves of bold wings free!
You tread the trails of wet and wind,
Travailing storm and sea,
On wide, white wings with piebald rims,
Your featherflames so fleet.
You strike the silence of man’s earth
With crooning cries most clear,
Mocking man’s peace with pompous mirth
Heedless in heart of fear.
Fleet flying the unfruitful grey
You surge the skyway’s stream,
You gulls and gallant terns unstaid,
You stars of storm and sea!
Primeval people playing so at ease
Flirting unfiltered pleasures as they please
Before the waiting, watchful warden’s eye
Within which all my loathsome doubtings lie—
How do they relax and loosen their limbs
To frolic free and fair and sweetly sing
Their passioned, playful croon bereft of care—
Beautiful souls laid full naked and bare
Without the airs of shroud-eyed doubt’s awareness,
The cringing closing of the heart’s free fairness.
Lighthouse leers, and staring I strain my sight
Blinking bright at its beaming, blinding light
Cruelly coruscating, too close, too clear
To my mind’s murky, muddy, memory dear.
But here I stand before the stairs extending—
To see it loom upon my soul so large!
Tossing and turning and toiling and bending
On stray seas, like a balustraded barge.
But blistering bluster of lightning and thunder—
The balustrades can’t stay that stray sea storm!
Nor tearing asunder with thoughtless blunder
Called with screech and scream of silence stillborn!
Such boundless bravery before the crowd
Clapping and crooning clear, lively and loud!
Without a fleeting beat to stamp your feet
Merely the meet of hands with hearty speech
Rolling and riling all the waiting punters
Clapping and laughing ‘long with welcome wonder!
Vivid vivacity! Such lively soul!
With lyrics dastardly, delightfully droll!
A proper, playful prelude to the show—
All others—by a prelude!—laid so low!
Voice, how you used to ring so fine and fair
With shrill vibrations through that youthful air,
Untrained delight unplayed, unused, unsung,
For now you strain against the aged lung
When singing along sweet Joanna’s song,
Which haunts the heavy heart to pine and long
For long lost days, olden days, before bloom
Of manhood’s blossom, beauty lost so soon,
Ravaged by manhood’s rasping puberty
So now the inner singer weeps for me.
Is this the way which waits ahead,
Fate fashioned from my furtive soul,
And fulfilled by my baneful bed
Built up by a dark demons’ toll?
Boring and banal, drab and drear—
A droning, dull demon indeed
Who jeers the mind with sneering leer
Sprung up from naught but planted seed.
The flaring fire of fantasy—
To fade and falter in this prison,
Snuffed smoke rising away from me,
With not a lively ear to listen.