Allegory of Hubris

He skylark flew above the plush champagnes

With mountains valleys rivers cheerful small

And even when he panned the farthest plains

Their reach for him did not reach far at all

Until he hit hit hit a wall unseen

In crystal air that harder there reached on

And cleanly fixed the sun within its glean

Where there he witnessed glinting endless dawn

Before the raptors ravens flew too near

And hovered just above below beside

While still he smiled a smile so light with cheer

That he their first bite took with smiling pride

And fell and fell some more and further fell

And falling whispered bloodless prayers for hell

The Maintenance of Paradise

We walk into the picture of her eyes

Where butterflies on raindrops sweetly dance

And flowers of all colours hypnotize

And rainbows drop before her very glance –

So orderly and bright, a Paradise

Is here created where she trains her gaze,

For she allows that buttercups are nice

And won’t allow those weeds from stranger days –

So into this a gremlin ghoul in grime

Whose dark chaotic squint creates a mess

Of toads and lizards, snakes and other crimes

Against her cultured garden… nonetheless

She knows some heroes with a spade or two

Who'll look to give him soon his gruesome due.

The Dog Bites

“You are the wounded one in this – you are

The one who needs, while I could not need less:

You are the lover, spreading on a star,

While I’m the dying dream of some caress.”

“Yes, you’re my wound, you’ve bitten me, while I

Must have your serum kiss to heal, transfuse me –

I feel you there, cold in the night, and die;

You stand within my threshold and refuse me.”

“So here I stand, both wound and healing drug,

And there you lie a victim of my bite?

In circles I spin round and stand and hug

A centre which is coldly made of spite?”

“So, yes, you understand, you’re that and more.”

“In spite, therefore, I shut your open door."

My Venus in the Morning

The morning on my terrace shines so bright

That any thought of clocks becomes a crime

Arising from impatience and blind spite

Where dark thoughts burden us, but here sweet time

Alights the thoughts and takes the mind

To star-lit places travelled in our dreams

Where sometimes when awake we wake to find

Again within the confines of what seems -

So, my sweet Venus, take your blissful ride

Within this morning you and I now share

Already here, the two of us inside

A happy brightness where we’re both aware

That here and there mean naught – but here you are

Beside me now, my brighter morning star.

Your Thighs at Midnight (to Venus Callipygian)

In naked midnight you as votive stand

In darkness there where moonlight serves

What’s first a blur, but then your reaching hand

Draws all attention to your thighs’ seen curves –

It’s there within the night all light affirms

The beauty of what curves and swells and moves:

In grace a better moon, in shape all terms

Or measurements of grace your form improves –

So here I stand, hid in a voyeur’s guise,   

In awe and witness of my wakened dream

Of moving thighs that now in whiteness rise

To fall within my mind where now they stream

With other forms held ever to be caught

That rise again when inspiration’s sought.

Leda to the Swan

I hold for you these cups in sacrifice

To what you are and all you come to be –

Here to entice, I pay the votive’s price

In supplication of your sovereignty.

So hold me here, my better husband, love –

I turn for your embrace, for I choose you;

Here procreate yourself, fly from above –

I freely give you what’s your rostrum’s due.

So all my flesh in prayer, I concentrate

Upon these eggs I show to brute, force, light

And their full incarnation, so I wait

For your high bill and wings, your feathered might

To catch me here, these vessels for your need,

And here now sound, clench, break, spill, god, I plead.

The Door Denied

She stares ahead, but thinks, “Good God, who’s he? –

He looked at me and understood too well –

And yet I don’t recall who he’s to me –

Those weird judgmental eyes seemed as from hell!”

“Oh God, she looked so shocked – damn, what scared her?

I glanced at her, I think, just for a second,

But in that little moment we two were

Combined and, by some force here, likewise reckoned!”

“I want to run away – he draws me back

Towards those eyes I've never seen before.”

“I want to run to her – the air now black

With adoration, fright – some dreadful door

Has opened here for us to step in through.”

“But I deny myself and he does too.”

Montmorency Park

Jack sat inside his thoughts lost in the park

Of yesterdays where wooden benches that

Received between the shady trees the dark

And twilight flecks that dappled where Jack sat –

He thought the whispered thoughts I'll softly tell

Of heated love turned wounded hate and caught

Between those warlike forces heaven hell

Where we with him sit where that day he thought –

He spied her there beside the cannons laugh

Within a life her sunny ways outside

His thoughts of her lost in the shadowed half

Where fixed a malice aimed at those he spied –

Onetime inside this park there was a crime

In shot of those black cannons there onetime –

Cupid and Psyche Redux

Give him your token, maiden, mother, crone –

He kneels for it, then raises it, her hand

Guides him towards the waiting empty throne,

From where they rule together this new land.

It flows before them in their golden dreams

Like hawks in flight, the grounds behind them roll,

And all that once was here and all that seems

Returns to them for them to mete and dole.

As angels on a height, they now survey

The grass within its growth, a cricket’s sound,

The feather of a hummingbird, its sway

Within a breeze where sunburst breaks unbound

From center, seed and egg, the embryo

From which love finds increase, change, constant flow.

Slowed Motion

 Her laughter bubbled from across the room

And then soft raindrops full of evening fell
And light on bend around a lunar bloom

Showed songbirds in confession in their dell

And in my mind I caught her twilight eyes
And then they grew those eyes all I could see
Were grey and deep round full and full of sighs
Or were they mine those sighs no longer free
To stand in thought I could not wait I moved
And she moved there towards some middle spot
Where meadows mountains skies seas earths approved
And universes everywhere forgot
Their laws and reasons spaces distant times

What’s here and there with sounding chimes and rhymes

Who’s That Knocking?

So who’s that knocking on sweet Sue’s front door?
She locked it just in time – it seems to her –
And now she’s hiding on her kitchen floor,
Behind a kitchen chair, her brain a blur.
“So who’s that knocking?” now she asks again –
“This knocking just won’t stop, and breaks my head;
It shatters every part of my poor brain,
And if it doesn’t stop, I’ll soon be dead.”
“So who’s that knocking, who’s that knocking here?
Now if you answer you will soon find out,
For I will breathe such sweetness in your ear:
The sweetest treats are what I’m all about.”
So who was knocking, promising such sweets?
It’s he who's taken now the sweeter treats.

Points

And when I see you there – you point my way –
I walk towards you where you waiting stand,
Although I know that you will soon today
Move me towards another point of land.
And though I know that you behind me reach
And there you’ve stood before me in the past,
And that you vanish when I near you, each
New time’s as fresh to me as was the last.
So stand away, my dear, and I’ll be there,
Approaching as you steer my daily course,
And step on step again I walk aware
That in you glows my beacon and that force
That through the waking day draws me towards
Those points where light, life, love mark their accords.   

This Last Turn of Our Mind

He sold his soul and did not ask a thing –

Brave Faust, I know him well – inside

The solaces that metaphysics bring,

We live together, talk, turn, steep and hide.

“Perhaps some tea,” I say to him betimes;

“Lapsang souchong,” he smokily suggests;

“It’s ten o’clock,” repeat the mantel’s chimes;

“So not yet twelve,” time equally protests.

“More talk perhaps, one last investigation

Of this turned that, the world does turn, you know;”

“From me you’ll get to that no protestation –

What will it do without us when we go?”

We sold our souls, and now we leave behind,

At twelve o’clock, this last turn of our mind.

Bastille Day

She's born on Bastille Day, and every year

A revolution in her life occurs;

The sans-culottes once more forget their fear –

Another prison falls, her life detours.

This prison guard was nice: he fed her cakes,

And let her have some paper and a pen,

And every morning, when the sun awakes,

He’d let her peek through cracks within their den.

“So there’s the moon,” her prison guard would claim,

“But don’t enjoy its light too long, for there

Is madness in its gaze, and all-the-same

Another comes tomorrow just as fair.”

But in her journal she did daily write,

“His kindness traps me in eternal night.”

Watery Face

She looked into the pool and saw his face

And lingered there too long and gave her mind

To him within the water’s rippling trace

Of his closed eyes, sad mouth – his voice so kind;

It said, “Please, kiss me now, give me your breath,

And give me back the life I once enjoyed,

And with your love’s surrender and your death

Your gentle life will be by me employed:

We’ll do such things, and give our aging Earth

Another youth, an Eden here imbrued

Through me in you – Earth’s paradisal mirth

Will bubble, tumble, spring from us renewed.”

With all her heart she quickly answered yes,

And kissed his lips and felt their long caress.

Bardo

He stood within a night to catch the fray

Of dark and clouds apart that rent and spun

Upon the rushing brightness of a day

Stupendous in its thrill and one  

Within him and outside with space time bent

Where sunburst seen displayed itself to him 

And looming sky and ground within the rent

Sustained their light as all else then dropped dim - 

All was forgotten and the rent redeemed

When as he crawled or stumbled like a child

Or as he walked or limped and all that seemed

Again devolved into the endless wild

And rapid choices to be made once more

When shadows rush towards a sunburst door.

The Dying Knight

With armour, plume, shield and my lady’s token

And love emblazoned on my scarlet heart

And with a burning lance and soul unbroken

By years of tourney where I rode my part

Upon a field suffused with light and duty

And overwhelming with event and done

All for my lady’s gaze, kind smile and beauty

That fell on me as others feel the sun,

I enter now my final battle for

The morning glory of a day in bliss

That even now arises from that core

So animated by my lady’s kiss –

Now here upon a field of sun and clover,

She sits with me until the dying’s over.

Psychopomp

I’m trapped within the furthest corner of

Their dining room – I watch them eat and drink

From this shadowed distance dark above

Where none see me and no one dares the link

Between our worlds, the breathing and the dead,

Where I exist, am always in transition

Before the door where inside all are lead

To those old landscapes and their deposition.

Then suddenly their cat aware he stares,

While they continue to avoid my space:

They blot their vision, can't confront the fears

That wait them here or in that older place.

But Henry, princely king of cats, he sees,

And every night comes closer by degrees.

Knight Errant

So while my mistress sleeps upstairs I roam

The darker regions of the noisy night;

For things leak out from corners of our home

And I deliver puissance, justice, right.

But I am so magnificent they walk

Quite willingly into my open maw,

But not before we have a little talk

About the house and of the house’s law.

For no intruders are allowed I swear,

And this and more is thoroughly explained;

I demonstrate my claws and show them where

The lot of them will soon be entertained.

So if alive or ghost, they come to me,

For my panache is their catastrophe.

Periwinkle's Purr, Pastoral

In apogee and perigee the moon

Still waned and waxed and all the seasons changed

And nothing happened late nor came too soon

With roses mostly painlessly arranged.

And Sue now viewed the world as with new eyes,

With scales and blind bits mostly dropped away;

She saw the world robed in its proper guise,

And to her purring cat had this to say,

“It happened in that moment, oh my sweet,

My hand withdrew just in that instant when

Your mouth closed on that evil poisoned treat –

For that good moment I now say amen.”

That’s what she said, not what she truly knew:

In truth, our Sue could neither stir nor brew.