A little Winter Mixed in his Soul Undone by sleeping hope When roused at dawn By a frozen sky Painted by the same distant Summer sun that shone Upon his ancient race, godlike In its promise of a fiery Season still to fully rise That comes to melt away All pressured chill The long night freezes To his aching frame When nothing but the past Is harvest cargoed In his hold to ship away When seasons change And tides do turn With wine and oils in bursting Urns that fatten promise Blessed with gain when Winds do favor once again To sail away to summer climes Where passing hardship Past the Straits within himself Is but a little Winter Mixed in the memories Of his soul and stored Below the vacant decks Where day does navigate, And wheel and rudder makes The long and cutting wake Towards those unmapped Harbors he has yet To reach on open seas…
(Verses that occurred to me today at sunrise… have a Good Day Folks)
There is a Stone within my side as great as all Golgotha A Rock of Ages, and of eons lived in exile from myself Lithos, peltast, it assails me still Gravestone, great rounded block that seals away my inner tomb It lingers on within me, pangs me by means no other men may see Milestone of all my worst misdeeds, burden of all the Good I never wrought Wet Whetstone of my Secret Soul, grinding boulder of Sisyphus alone Pillar of what I might have been, monument of nothing yet Marbled within me, of form uncut Statued still in long repose, no Master but myself at Work And I inactive at my task,
A stone weighs within me, harder than my coldest heart Frozen neath the whitest moon whose surface is a crystal shard So like the flint that pierces me, Who shall cut this bloody gem from me? The one that heavies out my heart, and feasts my flesh as if alive By mass of what is lost to me, by bile to gall me, stone all calcified Of blood a stupor, dried and vain, my veins collapsed to chiseled dust Does circulate to fix itself upon the stone that grows and harries hard in me To hammer I should go at it, to daily ring my utmost blows, To crack, and score, and sure reduce this thing that parasites my Inmost Man,
To split that stone of bone, sepulcher of graven lots, expose its marrow soft and withered Grind it down as it does me and carve that rock to fractured gravel Sledge and batter, pummel it, yet it remains and bides like bronze Fresh cast and hardened long in unsung seas
What if I surgeoned it by razor, spliced the flesh that harbors it, and then reached in to grasp it, slick as slime, yet hard as woe?
What if I but excised this tumor all of stone and pulled it from my bleeding self? I would and yet I know it has grown vessels, arteries to feed itself, all made of me for I have fed it even though I never wished, and thus it roots there where it grows, nested, certain of its place, unruined by my surgeries,
So there malingers still deep within me the minerals of my own misdeeds, an unchipped gem acursed of undone Goods, uncaring hard, all solid sharp, it weighs there still in pain and longing, dis-ease encased like pearls envested,
An astronaut, an engineer, a builder of cities, a frontiersman No shadows in day, no chill at night
I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:
A physicist, a mendicant priest, explorer who wanders all unknown lands No dark clouds at dawn, moon always full
I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:
A Greek genius, entrepreneur, a Viking sailing the blue whale road Clear sky at morning, red skies at night
I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:
Poet to make Homer blush, Man who stepped out of Time, Fleet Captain, the Invisible One, Pilot of the Dawn at the Night of No More
I wish I were alive in ways I am not now:
Happy Apostle of Christ, a young boy at play, Grandfather Christmas, the Wizard who dared, Inventor of Futures so Bright that they shone like the Rise of the Sun on a whole different world
And what prevents me from any of this?!
Only me, and
Me Alone
It is time I arose and became my True Self.
It is time I were alive in the ways I should Always Have Been… join me and we both shall Live
The bear found the boat of the new vanquished sea
The bed of the foam unplowed by the keel
No anchor was thrown, no motor did turn
No need to steer waters with waters all gone
The bear wondered hard how the strange ship had come
To a beach of slick sandings where seas were no more,
And what of the crew – abandoned like flotsam
Or shippage to somewhere the Oceans still roared?
The bear turned the hull and pressed on the timbers, but
The boat could not move on such sure vanquished seas
Yet still the bear stood there, aft of the port
That the boat could not make on now vanquished seas
Wond’ring too if men had all vanished
Deserting their Works like long vanquished seas…
“Drink this!” she said gaily, and perhaps a little too loudly. She handed him a fine-wrought yet small cup of some unknown metal. It seemed to flow into his hand as if it too were made of liquid, yet it also felt smooth, hard, and warm.
“He took the cup not unenthusiastically, for he had previously partaken of Eldeven wines on other occasions and knew them to be excellent and comforting. Even to the disheartened. Perhaps more potion than mere drink.
He sipped, and then drank more vigorously.
Then he help the cup in the palm of his hand, still feeling the peculiar warmth it seemed to radiate through the cup, or because of it, and stared at the remaining draught. It was almost weightless in his hand.
“Would that in consuming I would always far better account for that which most oft consumes me…”
She laughed. “Is that verse?” she asked good-naturedly.
He frowned quickly. “If you wish.”
Then he added somewhat moodily, “However do not mistake the report of a thing for the thing itself.”
He paused a short while before speaking again, still puzzling at the fine and almost arcane work upon the Eldeven cup from which he drank.
“I think rather it the philosopher, mystic, and metaphysician in me,” he finally admitted. “Or perhaps I am but a frustrated soldier. Or priest.”
The latter remark may have been the more truthful he thought to himself, or perhaps they all were.
She smiled pleasantly, but also somewhat craftily and perhaps even knowingly.
“Is it not enough then to be a Master Poet among men?” she teased him.
Larmaegeon placed his cup upon the heavy, large feasting table with its unspun cloth of gold and dark silver filigree for needleless embroidery. He smiled in his own turn but it seemed more an inner musing than a pleasantry.
“Poetry is Mastery of Nothing. Except mere words. And words are absolutely nothing without a Mastery of Life to birth them. Otherwise words and verse both are but whispers upon the winds. Perhaps they go here, perhaps there, seen to bend this limb, displace that grain of sand, but other wise no one knows from whence they came or where they go. If they go. Otherwise they catch the ear of this wandering man, or that pleased lady, or travel out in time to light upon the fancy of some child yet unborn. But poetry is not mastery, so much as its echo. Art, without Manhood, is neither master of anything, nor does it master anything. And clever words are not achievements or Life, they are at best, and most often, the mere reflection of both.”
This seemed to both disturb and yet curiously satisfy the Russian Witch. Larmaegeon watched her eyes momentarily as they adjudged him, and then noticed that her reddish-blonde hair, though it shifted in colour and aspect often in the day, appeared as smooth and flowing and shimmering gold in the strangely steady glow of the surreal fires of the Eldeven hall.
Klura picked up her own cup and drank lightly from it, her eyes and quizzical brows peeking above the lip of her drink as if they looked at the Bard from a great distance, or from another time. She finished, lowered her drink, and spoke again.
“Do you then think so little of what you do, while so many others think so well of it?” she asked, but not teasingly this time.
“I do,” Larmaegeon replied instantly and without any hesitation. “I do think little of it.” Then he raised his cup again, saluted her and hers, and said without any irony at all, “And yet, my dear, I excel at it…”
Then he made a small bow and rose fluidly from his chair and having stood looked down at her.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I will indeed be poor company tonight. And that is entirely my own fault.”
Then he turned and walked away and towards the hall’s great doors and swung them open unaided by the guards, who watched him warily but without movement, as he silently departed the room.
Klura watched him go, his simple green wardrobe seeming to darken almost into a glistening black as he left. And then he was gone, and not even his restless shadow seemed a lingering memory at that moment to her. And yet, somehow, his words remained…
(This is a first-draft bare-sketch I wrote of a scene between the Welsh Bard Larmaegeon and the Russian Witch Klura as they were being entertained at the hall of the Samarl of Samarkand by the Sidh and Prester John [Jhönarlk]. It came to me this morning as I have been writing and working on several of my novels much of late. Even been composing a fair amount of poetry. I guess to be occupied of mind is to be occupied, if you’ll act on it that is. Anyway I have edited it once, for spelling so far but no farther. It concerns what Larmaegeon thinks of Poetry and his profession as a Bard, especially given recent events in the novel, and what Klura thinks of him [to a degree]. In one way you could call it a scene of Romance and in another a criticism and critique of both Verse and Romance sans Action. Or, yet another of my criticisms of the State of the modern World in the West. Which effeminately thinks that mere thoughts and words and wishes [filigrees and embroideries and pedigrees, or in modern terms information/journalism and memes and talk] fix or resolve the world. Or that those things alone ever amplify the true Good, or protect anyone or anything from actual evil…)
From the second novel in my High/Mythological Fantasy Trilogy The Kithariad (The Doom of Kitharia)
I thought that I had injured
That with which I thought
Only then to understand
The fault that I had wrought,
My imagination
Turning as it slept
Found itself abandoned
While to other lands I crept,
The hills of high philosophy
The mountains of the moon
The blood of war, the boatman’s fee
(That endless shore, an anchored lee – variant line)
Upon these I was hewn,
The craft of foreign featherstones
A science, or an art?
What matter to that one dethroned
Whose will will soon depart?
Clever in the market stalls
Cunning in the wares
What happens when intent appalled
Is taken unawares?
Creation is a fakir’s cheat
The muses whores of fate
Yet man is just an instrument
Come often, or come late,
If he would be a better thing
He must to something else
Bend himself in constant chase
And sometimes so with stealth,
For he commands that lofty globe
Granted him by God,
Yet even so, he must still show
He knows of the façade,
For art is nothing but the world
Dressed up as if were true,
Therefore man has no real art
Without what he first grew,
Within his mind, upon his heart
He wrote, he sketched, he drew
Then he found that thing profound
When nothing yet is due
Thus (and therefore),
Art can nothing to this world
It did not first possess,
Yet turning so with twisted charms
Man does acquiesce
That in himself creation roams
Seeking whom (and what) to eat, but
First that man must eat this world
For him to be complete…
__________________________________________
Usually I post my verse on Mondays. For First Verse.
But I have been very busy lately and have had scant time for composition. Today though a friend of mine mentioned something about “creation” and since he is an artist I went ahead and wrote a poem I’ve been meaning to write awhile on the subject of art and creation anyway.
I have my own definition for the term “featherstone”in relation to creation and art. Or indeed in relation to anything at all.
I use it in this way: it refers to a magical or mythological Xoanon (that falls from the heavens and is taken as a god or carven into an idol and worshiped), to a thing that cannot in reality exist (because it is entirely self-contradictory), to polish away all of the weight of a thing and leave behind only the most opposite (and usually useless) thing, and even to Potmos, and the Residuum.
By foreign featherstone I mean that featherstone not native to one’s self, or that featherstone one must seek out elsewhere or that lures one elsewhere.
The other night a buddy of mine posted this image to my Facebook page wondering if it would interest me. It did. And so I wrote the following poem to accompany it.
She swept the lake
A conjured doom
She rose in haste
From threaded looms
The twisted vines
Across the stones
Did thrash and twine
As if alone
She wailed her torment –
In effigy
Sprang from the Earth
Yet not redeemed
An omen of an ancient kind
A living curse, a knotted sign
Evoked in vengeance
Shaped by awe
Of blood resent
And rootless gnawed
Some witch has woven
Of her spite
A kindred soul
To seek delight
To haunt and drive
With fearsome rage
Another down
Into her age
For up will come
That from our souls
In weaving wrong
Is all foretold
And birthing it will
Monsters mold
Of longing hot
And hatreds cold…
There is a sunset hall
Far away from here
I’ve seen it dim and small
But in my heart it’s near
It’s empty when I look
No matter, day or night
By everyone forsook
A wasted, ruined sight
Yet in my soul it burns
Dark with bitter tears
For in my mind it churns
Fires still that sear
I wish the light would fade
From all I have seen there
It is an open grave
Ling’ring in the air
It will not go away
That sunset never ends
The stones will not decay
And I cannot defend
Myself from it…
The empty song of it…
The coming night of it…
The wasted flight from it…
If one day you find
Me sitting by the sea
Drowned, but still I’m dry
Despite all you see
Know an empty hall
Sunset, far away
Has found me after all
Or did I go to stay?
Seek it…
Did I go seek it?
The ruined site of it…
Because…
There is a sunset hall
Far away from here
Sometimes it will call
From where is never clear
But when I close my eyes
I find my heart within
No matter how I lie
I live there in myself
My wife arrived home from a trip to the beach on July the First. The next morning we had get home sex. She went to sleep afterwards but I got up and wrote the following poem.
I like the poem a lot but I am having difficulty naming it. I like these potential names/titles: Rich Everafter, Those Treasures Within, The Labors of Love, The Harvest of Human Labors, or Sweat of Our Love.
If you have a preference among those or would like to make your own suggestion then feel free to do so. I look forward to reading your ideas.
Here is the poem. Let me know what you think, and what you would call it.
My wife’s body is naked and soft like broken ground
My wife’s body smells rich like fertile soil
My wife’s body is dark and moist like morning loam the restless Meander has watered at sunrise
I think that I shall plow her deeply again when she wakes and see what treasures within us both lie hid
Like the open fields of tended Pharos or the silty banks of the flooded Nile we shall suddenly sprout silver and salt and bare fecund Earth overflowing with milk and honey and blood dark wine and rampant wild oats and thus shall we feed ourselves a lifetime on the harvest of our human labors and the sweat of our love
My wife’s body is naked
My body is naked
Now shall we again labor in earnest, produce in abundance, and be rich everafter…
Well, it ain’t really a Tale for Tuesday, but it is a tale about how you should tell what you can’t really tell when you try. Not in words, anyway…
ON POETRY
Poetry involves the minute manipulation of words in such a way that they are constantly and subtly altered in definition, either so that they take on a broader and more flexible implication than they have ever possessed before, or so that they take on a more narrow and peculiar resolution in terminology than they have ever before possessed.
Do this wisely and well and with patient and practiced craft and you will be considered a master of phrasing and sound, perhaps even possessed of real poetic genius. Do this sloppily or shoddily and in haste and without regard for the demands of true meaning in language and you will be considered a mere dilettante or perhaps even a hapless hack.
I conceived of the idea for this poem about a week and a half ago but was unable to work on it due to other business and work demands. On Sunday night (the 26th of June) about an hour before the Game of Thrones finale I began work on it. It shall be a long, narrative poem with what I hope is an unanticipated and unusual conclusion, and a twisting storyline. At this point of course it is in its infancy and is far from complete.
Aside from being a long narrative poem I am also thinking very seriously of turning it into a Graphic Novel which will also serve as a de-facto manual on ancient Mnemonic Techniques. I am already sketching out possible illustrations or old woodcut designs for the Work.
Hope you enjoy it thus far.
HARD THE HAMMERSMITH
Hard the Hammersmith worked all day
Hard the Hammersmith would not say
What his toiling would produce
Or why he labored so profuse
Hard the Hammersmith worked all night
Hard the Hammersmith knew delight
For his hammers truly rang
Fire, metal, sturm und drang
Hard the Hammersmith took no rest
Hard the Hammersmith did his best
For he always set his task
Above whatever weakness asks
Hard the Hammersmith took no bread
Hard the Hammersmith shunned his bed
For the Work to which he bent
He would master, or be spent
Hard the Hammersmith took no drink
Hard the Hammersmith did not think
Yet on he drove himself to act
With anguish was his body wracked…
I was working on a short story when I happened across the Daily Post whose prompt-subject matter was Empty. Now I’ve had a lot of personal experience with Empty over the course of my life, both the good kind, and the bad kind. So I thought I’d make a post about that and turned out this poem at lunch. Hope you enjoy it.
Have a good day folks.
EMPTY
I once was empty, full of naught
By calculation, mind and thought
I once was empty, hollowed out
Melancholy, heart in doubt
I once was empty, fearless, cold
My fury made me endless bold
I once was empty, cast alone
It sharpened me so I was honed
I once was empty, bleak despair
My atmosphere a poisoned air
I once was empty, of myself
That was joy I could regale
I once was empty, God was gone
Why had He left me all alone?
I know of empty, made and true
I know of empty, me and you
I know of empty, blessed, good
I know of empty, as I should
For Empty is a Friend of mine
That gives me all, and then sometimes
Relieves me of all I have known
So I am ever forced to roam
The weight of the woman
That the man waits to love
Bears on him deeply, and
Bares from above
The wait for that woman
Is a hard weight to bear
As long as he loves her
As long as he dares
He’ll carry within him
The state of her grace
The memories find him
The shape of her face
The scent of her clean flesh
The heat of her breasts
The curve of her mouth
As her lips on him rest
The twist of her hair
Her eyes looking up
He looking down
On her beauty to sup
Her breath soft and catching
Her smile as she takes
Her arms to enwrap him
In rapture to make
She stoops now to conquer
He rises to serve
The wait for the woman
Is what he observes
Yet the weight of that woman
Is a hard thing to bear
When his bed is all empty
For she is somewhere
Other than with him
When he wants her most
For nothing between them
Is worthy of boast
Though everything honored
Is ne’er surely lost
For the wait on the woman
Is the weight of the cost…
Alternate ending:
So he waits on the woman
Even if lost
For the wait for the woman
Is the weight of the cost
________________________________________________
This is a new poem I wrote this past weekend while lying in bed. It has a sister or companion poem that I wrote about the same time called The Deep Well, or Woman is a Deep Well.
The Tower above, the Earth below
I wandered the world, desiring to know
Where in my heart the frontier did lay
In the sky or the sea, in the night or the day?
Mountains I climbed, Life did I track
Waters I sailed, then sailed them right back
Sands in my hands ran through my fingers
What should I fear, where was the danger?
I’d live forever, forever a boy
Time everlasting, endless and cloy
The sun burned me brown, moon cooled my mind
The stars they did glisten, by God so designed
Happy was nothing – I was Alive!
The world was my oyster, of nothing deprived
Before I was man, I was a boy
Everything Holy, the Hope and the Joy
Fish splashed the clear streams, hawks roamed the air
I could lay in the green grass and anything dare
Nothing was memory, all was yet new
Impossibly certain was all that I knew
Hero I was in the depths of my soul
Adventure and gamble was all I did know
The past hadn’t happened, the future a dream
The present was ever, or so did it seem
The Tower above me, the Earth down below
I’d climb to the crown, how most apropos
For why should I care, the sun never sets
Upon the heart of the boy who will never relent
But I’ve climbed and I’ve climbed and I’ve climbed all my life
I’ve climbed in the cold, and I’ve climbed through the strife
I’ve climbed in the heat, through the dark and the death
I’ve climbed when impelled, and I’ve climbed without rest
I’ve climbed when determined, and when suffering lack
For I’m far too high now and cannot go back
Though the summit is still such a lifetime away
I doubt I can reach it, at least not this way
My hands cut and bloodied, my footing unsure
I question my efforts, my motives obscure
Yet sometimes when weary, I’ll glance far below
To see that young boy with his whole life to sow
And I wonder if warnings might cause him to stop
To stay in his valley, not climb to the top
For I want to just tell him, “The climb never ends,
Stay where you are boy, you can’t comprehend…”
But I see him look upwards, take hold of the stones
And I know that he’ll climb where he must all alone
For the Tower above us, a siren it sings
To the boy down below us who of towers still dreams…
I offer this as my submission for the National Poetry Day. I am now at work on my fifth book of poetry.
THE LAST ONES
The cold that the last man mentioned
Before he bled away
The soul that the last child ventured
Because he could not stay,
The bones that the last girl offered
As her flesh was sold
The heart of the last babe slaughtered
As it beat beyond all hope,
I’d tell you of their endings
If I thought you’d care
I’d tell you of their wendings
Of all the things they’d dare,
I’d tell you of their Image
Holy and Divine
I’d tell you that their fortunes
Were just as great as mine,
Yet somehow we have failed them
Deeply in our selves
Discarded like a useless limb
Cast off and then expelled,
The smile of the fair sex faded
Frown of the end within
The wiles of the dead folk fêted
Crown of the ceaseless sin,
The eyes of the masses hollow
Febrile, sick, and stale
The lies of the empty follow
Beguiling, sure as hell,
I’d tell you the last one lingers
If I thought you’d see
I’d tell you “deeply listen”
Though you would not accede,
I’d tell you of your Nature
Made apparent in your acts
I’d show you well, and show you sure
That no man is abstract,
Yet somehow death entails you
Your hearts are all of stone
Lifeless are the last of you
So soulless and alone…
The Night that the Knight cursed evil a wondrous thing began
Men who once had cowered, together they did band
Beneath the Lonely Banner of the Knight who cursed the wrong
Once they had just whispered, now they sang his song
The High Lords and the Ladies corrupt upon their thrones
Had laughed to hear such curses when the Knight was all alone
Though when his profane blood-oaths thundered through the folk
Fury rose among them, with the tyrant’s whip and yoke
“Bring us now New Vows from him, make him swear to us!”
Shouted Lords and Ladies, roused now in their lust
Yet the Knight who cursed the evil would not bend to threat
Their embassies he spat upon, then harangued them ‘til they sweat
Then the High Lords and the Ladies began to see the Truth
That the Knight who cursed the Evil was fearless now forsooth!
And still the People rallied, hot now in the land,
The Knight who cursed the Evil gave heart for them to stand
“Send us an Assassin, experienced in crime,”
Said the Lords and Ladies, “to kill him ‘fore his time!”
So the black assassin crept upon the Knight
As he cursed the Evil in the shadows of the night
Yet darkness did betray him as he sought to strike
For the Knight who cursed the Evil caught him in the Light
A struggle hard and fearsome did they both attend
Blood in all directions, wounds as deep as sin
Finally the combat wound down to the Will
When the Knight triumphant the spent assassin killed
He took the ‘ssassins blood-stained blade with the warrant he
had wrecked,
Then sent it to the waiting Lords in scribbled hand, “You’re next!”
Yesterday I took a little nap because last weekend I contracted poison oak, or maybe sumac. It’s been miserable and I hoped to speed the healing and reduce the itch with a nap.
Anyway I awoke with this poem/song running through my kind. I had to go and take an immediate shower because the itching was so bad and in the shower I composed the rest of the sections above in my head.
Then I got out and wrote out what i had composed. It is still unfinished of course though I already have the entire poem sketched out in my head and some other sections are worked out, such as:
“Your silence speaks to your intent more surely than your pleas
For action is the pledge of life, not promises like these
If you’re determined stand your ground, if not I know you well,
Passive is the heartless man, and icy is his hell…”
Let fall the harm that must now come
so men in future ages weep
not for a doom that is their own,
but for us, now long asleep,
Far better that we ever take
upon ourselves our own mistakes
than send them forth all morrow-wise
to future men for their demise,
For we had Fate and Fortune still
before our hearts grew hard and chill,
we could have tempered all our wrongs,
had we had courage all along,
but always we sidestepped ourselves,
for comfort’s sake and little else,
thus so the world is as it is,
this falls to us, not future men,
Let come the harm that now is ripe
some future age we should not slight,
with all our sins and cowardice
for unlike us they’re innocent,
They have not built these walls of woe
nor murdered children they have sown,
they have not sold their souls to debt
they may not butchery abet,
they have not terror nurtured long
they have not reckless leaders grown,
they’ve yet to quake in abject fear
their evils have not yet appeared…
(another poem of mine on modern men and our society and how I pray that we not push our evils upon future generations. Yet I know we will because our cowardice is great and had we any courage we’d be at these things ourselves.
This came to me yesterday as I cut grass. I had to stop cutting to go inside and write it. It is unfinished as of yet.)
(I wrote this little ditty back when I first read the Red Wedding and the aftermath. But I never posted it. Until I recently got reminded of it.)
The Wedding bleeds Red
When the Butcher is nigh,
The Maiden then said
It all with a sigh, “My husband is murdered My future is dead, Where nows grows Justice Or vengeance instead?”
Yet chilled be the mother
Cold is the womb,
Killed be the feasting
Still is the room,
Down sinks the young man
Up the Old Thing,
A Lady of Black Doom
Whose Stoneheart shall ring…
the artwork is not mine, it can be found here: Lady Stoneheart
The sun to come by Son absolved
What wynd wove Wyrd have webs resolved
To write the future fate of Man
When woe is passed and wonder spans
The breadth of Earth, renewed, remade
Existence birthed, reformed, refreshed
Without that wound that scars all flesh…
The Plow of the Lord
Does harrow man deep
With horrors unmeasured
Disasters all steeped,
As high as a pyre
As cold as a barrow
Bone shattered shards
Grief sharp as an arrow,
The Plow of the Lord
Like an unsharpened axe
Beats ‘gainst the mind
On the soul grimly hacks,
The body is frail
When the blade passes through
When the plow breaks the Earth
Of the flesh that is you,
The Spirit is willing
Able, and true, but
The Plow is relentless
We all know it’s true,
There’s a blade in the hand
Of the Lord that is sharp
Do as you will
It still cuts to the Heart,
Yet the Plow of the Lord
As it shears you away
As it grinds and it harries
By night and by day
Prepares you for planting
Scours you for seed
To plant something better
In hope and in deed,
The Plow of the Lord
Is heavy with weight
It turns and it churns
All men as if clay,
It slices his veins, and
Opens his blood
Hooks out his roots
From the mire and mud,
Tears (tares) out a furrow
For the storm and the rain
Displaces the stones
Which all scream with the pain,
Makes a way for the sunlight
To illumine the ground
A place to start digging
When the treasure is found
For God knows that under –
Neath the soil of our sin
Lies a pearl deeply buried
That His Plow will upend.
Drumly marched the men at war
Turmoil in the fields,
A squire watched a warbird soar
The knight his brother killed,
Rivers ran like roaring lief
That spill in bloody seas,
Drumly did the old warchief
In battle find no ease,
Horns called to men to come
At once and rally as they did
Whistles tore the creeping clum
As tumult did forbid,
Arrows rained, and reigned again
As shields were broke and spent,
Young men toppled dead as sin
Their armor torn and rent,
A pikeman watched the warbirds soar
Their feast upon the Earth,
The dusk would drumly long abhor
What horrors slaughter birthed,
Mud ran with blood, the churning mire,
Blacker by degrees,
Drumly did the old desire
In murder find no ease…
Note: My wrist has finally recovered enough to return to regular blogging and writing. I hope.
But my pre-break output may fall to two or three posts per week compared to my pre-break posting rate due to the difficulty I still have with typing and due to my other work load. Thank you for your patience.
Hope you enjoy Drumly Did. It was originally just a throw away poetic experiment with antique language but by the time I finished it I liked it and decided to keep it.
The Light that made the formless dark
Did crown and shape the outer world
Yet within it forged the Inner Soul
That fashioned all that lives and breathes
The Light dispersed gave birth below, yet
Solid all and made of substance in itself
A Secret spawns, a kind of Cosmos bred
Of the very Blood that feeds the restless
Ever-turning, Eternal Mind of God…
I apologize for my absence this past week. I’ve had a stomach virus which has been, just to be honest, the worst intestinal infection I may have ever had in my entire life. It made me violently ill, later exhausted (I still tire easily and it started last Monday, so I’ve had it for 8 days now), and I am just now really recovering. Still, I would say that I’m actually more of about 85 to 90% recovered rather than fully recovered.
Below is the first real work I’ve been able to do in a week or more. It’s unfinished but came to me this morning when I awoke. Hope you enjoy it and hope you are well. If not well, if you’re like me, then I hope you rapidly recover. Not slowly, like me.
THE EMBRACE OF WARM FLESH
The embrace of warm flesh
Ardent in its vigor
Constant in its desire
Purposed in its method
Relentless and intrepid
Determined in consummation
Fearless in elation
Without an accusation
Quiet desperation…
This happens to be my favorite section of monologue from a play by Shakespeare (any play by Shakespeare), and there are many brilliant ones. This is from the Henry Cycle. (Henry discusses his past nature as scoundrel and the companion of scoundrels and his coming nature as king.)
Since I was a kid, a teenager actually, I have taken what I consider to be great sections of poetry, prose, plays, songs, etc. and rewritten them to see if I could improve upon them in some way (linguistically, poetically, phonetically, in meaning or emphasis, etc.). As an exercise in the improvement of my own poetic capabilities. Or towards the improvement of whatever other capabilities I happened to be attempting to exercise.
To me this is the very paragon of verse from Shakespeare’s plays, for any number of reasons, not least the undercurrents of shaded meaning, the psychologically acute self-analysis, and the prophetic pronouncements of the future. I have rewritten this section many times and in many different ways but did it again late last week as an exercise to keep myself from becoming rusty and out of practice at this type of verse and monologue.
The first section is the Work of Shakespeare. The second section is partially Shakespeare’s, the part in italics (in order to set the theme of the monologue), and the last part is my rewriting of the same. It is not only a rewriting, I’ve also altered the emphasis, slightly and subtly, but it also contains allusions to other subject matter and characters I have written about in my own poetry, such as Orpheus and the Tears of Iron.
I hope you enjoy it. I also hope you try such exercises for yourself to improve your own capabilities.
I KNOW YOU ALL – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyoked humor of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mist Of vapors that did seem to strangle him. If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work, But when they seldom come, they wished for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. So when this loose behavior I throw off And pay the debt I never promisèd, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes; And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I’ll so offend to make offense a skill, Redeeming time when men think least I will.
I KNOW YOU ALL – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND JOHN GUNTER
I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyoked humor of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mist Of vapors that did seem to strangle him.
Of temperance there is none found in me When overwhelming Wyrd o’ermasters All the conduct of my prior faculties Yet when I am come, and baring as I come The former foil that gilds me dull, yet sharp In indiscretions manifold who will vouchsafe all my claims and titles Young with new maturity, if not I? In reform well sprang like Orpheus From the chair of Pluto and his iron tears My coming crown unworn, my sins unshorn Shall outline the very shadowed limits That I so like the scorching sun of noon Shall burn away when the Dawn of Me Does unexpected rise from deep within And clotted clay, the seeming sepulchre That frontiers all I have ever been Will be seen to walk beneath the heavens As if a new king bestrode the mortal world In glory more like ancient gods than man…
As part of my reading today I came across this passage in a work of ER Eddison:
“My pleasure is my power to please my mistress:
My power is my pleasure in that power.”
Which, compared to the surrounding work, struck me as dull and listless and uninspired. I didn’t like it and thought it could have been much better, comparatively speaking. (If it is indeed a quote cited from another work I have not as yet found the original source.)
So I decided to rework the couplet (and thereafter expand it) to see if I could render a better and more apt and more fit version (given the surrounding context). As an experiment, such as the kind of experiments I did on rewriting verse as a young kid.
This is what I developed:
“My pleasure is my power to please my mistress:
Her power in that pleasure is to my pleasing
Such powers, pleasing to us both
Yield pleasures sweet and e’er unending
In memory and reminiscence all alike To the very powers of those pleasing acts.”
And now for something completely different for First Verse. A political poem.
THE ENEMY WHO LEADS YOU
The enemy who leads you
Stained black with your blood
From poniard to vanguard
His plotting is thrust,
In counsel he’s clever
In Truth he’s foresworn
In trust he is shrewder
In craft than forborne,
His word is his measure
Though never a gauge
His promises guilt-bound
A thrice-gilded cage,
His skill brightly scheming
Adversarial bonds
True allies shall languish
Abandoned anon;
The one who commands you
Is not as you are
His mettle was tempered
A curved scimitar,
The suffering of others
The tyrant’s cold hand
Is given in fealty
To foreign demands,
If seals are thus issued
If agreements are made
The foe who now spends you
Will proffer no aid;
Command is elected
When Free Men take count
But no Virtue is granted
When deception does mount,
A man’s what a man is
Come first in his heart
If contrivance is motive
Then guile is his art –
Be wary of such men
Be warned of their aims
Wrapped in your losses
He’ll yet court his gains,
If you submit to his orders
If complicit in course
Then the Enemy who leads you
Will rule you by force.
The Sorcerer’s tongue an adder crawls
To slither through the hearts of men
A viper coiled in roils of lies
Seduces all with poisoned ends,
The Necromancer of the Age
Raising up deceit and death
From tombs and tomes by ruin lost
Has given form and stirred cold breath,
Enchantments webbed and eldritch spun
Like spiders creep across the mind
So even men who seem themselves
Are slaves to him, enthralled like kine,
Hades vast and oceans deep
Are hidden in his crafty art
The conjured word is as he speaks
A servant dim and set apart,
The warlock’s gloom – bespoken like a spell
Has snared the fool and baited traps
To line the road of Truth along which
Even brave men cannot make their maps,
The Waystaff of the Witch’s word
Has charmed the Wise with venoms dark
Bound in blood men sound in every other way
By sound of him fall all unnerved
Their manhood washed away in flood,
The alchemic base of rank and rot
Has made a potent portion of regret
Yet who still speaks of deeds begot
When dread by sorcery yet abets?
The Witch’s teat, the serpent’s tongue
Eidolons frozen in the soul
Glams and dictums (dicins) doom us all
Who should by wit the Witch atone,
We have fallen all and one
Under shrouds envoked by terms of fraud
Cultic does the lie allure
Guile the noose of little gods,
If we will not soon this wrong dispel
Cut out the tongue that binds us so
Then sorcery shall be our gaol
The price of prison be our soul.
From the Worm Ouroboros, by E. R. Eddison, which I have recently been re-reading. I love that book and it is, no doubt, one of the greatest books of fantasy/myth ever written. Pure poetry in prose, and often, outright song:
She took the heavy volume with its faded green cover, and read: “He went out on
the night of the Lord’s day, when nine weeks were still to winter; he heard a great
crash, so that he thought both heaven and earth shook. Then he looked into the
west airt, and he thought he saw hereabouts a ring of fiery hue, and within the ring
a man on a gray horse. He passed quickly by him, and rode hard. He had a flaming
firebrand in his hand, and he rode so close to him that he could see him plainly. He
was black as pitch, and he sung this song with a mighty voice–
Here I ride swift steed, His flank flecked with rime, Rain from his mane drips, Horse mighty for harm; Flames flare at each end, Gall glows in the midst, So fares it with Flosi’s redes As this flaming brand flies; And so fares it with Flosi’s redes As this flaming brand flies.
“Then he thought he hurled the firebrand east towards the fells before him, and
such a blaze of fire leapt up to meet it that he could not see the fells for the blaze. It
seemed as though that man rode east among the flames and vanished there…”
In my Other Worldnovels the Sidhs use a code word (or the Samarl and his allies do in any case) to describe a being they believe to have existed for a very long period of time using a most unusual method of life extension. (Or possibly it periodically dies and is reborn again.) The Samarl and his allies believe this being to be evil and an enemy.
The word used to describe this being among themselves (so no one else will understand who they are really talking about) is Daufin. The Daufin is typically also identified or represented by a code symbol, as well as a drawing of a mythical beast (which actually exists and is controlled by the code-named Daufin, though few believe it actually exists anymore), and by a code phrase.
The term Daufin is not to be confused with the French term Dauphin though I readily admit that I took the term directly from the French term. And yes, for those who know me well you must be thinking, “French?” As you know I have little interest in modern things French, but in Ancient things and Medieval things French (the Franks for instance, and Charlemagne, and the ancient Romances, and the Gauls) I have great interest.
And I have great interest in the Dauphin, both the one denoting the Medieval prince and the more ancient term I suspect it is derived from, and what that implied. The Dauphin has always fascinated me though I rarely mention it.
In any case before I insinuate the conspiracy surrounding the Samarl and the Daufin too deeply in my novel I have been trying variants on the term, as I actually very much adore the term Dauphin and think it perfect though being French, even if it is early French, it is not linguistically suited to the Sidhs and the other Eldeven peoples of the novels. With that in mind here are a number of variants upon the term Daufin which I might use. If you have a favorite variant or you wish to suggest one of your own that strikes you as particularly pleasing then please leave a comment and let me know. If you want to explain why I’ll be happy to know that as well.
Variants on the term Daufin/Dauphin:
Daughfin
Dolfign/Dalfign
Dalphin
Dahlfin
Dalphang
Dolfang
Daufang (this sounds a bit too Oreintal to me, but given the origins of the Daufin it might serve well)
Below is the code phrase (in verse) used to describe the Daufin, and it seems a sort of song, and it is, but it is also a set of codes by which the speaker identifies what he knows about the Daufin. As more is learned more verses are added. It is obviously translated into English from the original Eldeven:
“Arose the Daufin from the seas, as deep and dark as Tântalos
Whose ruin ran the riven world three times round the sunken hosts,
What is this thing, whence did it rise, who sired it or set it loose?
How many times to be reborn, how many mortals yet seduce?
A secret thing crawls in the Egg, the Sun has never seen its face
When will it hatch next in the world, all other things to then erase?”
The seeming symbol for the Daufin is a mythical beast, but the symbol for the real Daufin is of a multi-headed sea-serpent hatching from a giant egg along the flooded beach of a sinking island.
If Christ prevailed men would not cower
If Christ prevailed God’s Holy Tower would
Stand a rampart in this world that none could
Raze nor hope to break, nor should
His Kingdom ever quake for fear of being over-run
If Christ prevailed men would fear not Death
If Christ prevailed men would not fear to truly Live
If Christ prevailed there would be no tribes
At endless war, no pointless hate consuming every shore
With riot, hatred, fire, and fury circumscribed
If Christ prevailed “Repent!” on every tongue and wrong
Would be avoided, not relived eternal in profitless cycles
Of sorrowful sin, evils would be un-grown and long buried
Not watered with grasping human grievance, a song of
Festering harm sung to our children like Grimmaged fairy tales
If Christ prevailed all men would as brothers walk long
Beside another, traveling from place to place in happy peace
While laughing of marvelous discoveries made and deeds
Redeemed in better fortune than they had first imagined
When humbly in their abandoned pride they were again Reborn
If Christ prevailed then Justice would rule this Earth
Not vengeance, not crucifying and murderous retribution,
If Christ prevailed then innocents would not lie dead
In pools of blood or lay breathless and abandoned
In favor of our own prideful assumptions about the Truth
If Christ prevailed all men with Mercy would extend themselves
To rework wrong into a better thing, a home fit for
Good and Godly conduct, Law would be Great and not merely law
No man would flee responsibility, Duty would reign, and
Sacrifice would paint and decorate our halls with Holy Acts
If Christ prevailed we would need no government of man
For God would live within, and Man Himself, once so ennobled
Could neither bow nor sit for any other king, and all
Other governance would seem a dream of despair long deserted
In the desperate nightmare of an unreal and wasted world
If Christ prevailed then such a Kingdom as the world has never
Known would be everywhere apparent, its Frontiers swollen
With ceaseless growth, no enemy would want to stand against it,
Old foes would be absorbed and made equals, no Jew, no Greek,
No Gentile would be alien or stranger in that Better Land
If Christ prevailed all men would be equals, anxious
To outdo the other in holiness and good, competitive in our
Desires to be more like God, not less of honor and of grace,
Our Feats would be of Saintly Salt, Virtues would accrue, and
Our Peeraged Manhood we would hold a Holy Thing from God
But Christ does not prevail
For we are sorely and surely most ourselves, self-absorbed,
Split into endless, bickering tribes, minted into our
Mindless classes, divided in our sickened hearts, soulless
In our lack of faith, impotent in our works, spiritless and
Dead within ourselves – we guard nothing, build nothing,
Claim nothing, oppose nothing, promote nothing, become nothing
For deep inside we are afraid, and we are small and we are
No men to build Mighty Kingdoms of, and so
Christ does not prevail, for we are cowards all by choice,
When I was young I let all things settle as they would
If anybody wanted to I said then that they should
Then as I aged I noticed that a lot of things were wrong
I could not stomach anymore just to get along
Evil men, and wasted lives, practices corrupt
They were no longer over there, they overflowed my cup
I did not want, I did not care, I did not wish to take
All the wrong I saw around, nor all the ills it makes
So now I Rant, and sometimes Rave, and often I Revolt
I care no longer it offends, often that’s my hope
For people nod, and people smile, and meekly they agree
If everything is mildly spoke – all passion absentee
But if with fire, fume and smoke, and fury you explode
In righteous anger ‘gainst what’s wrong it will then expose
Their passive manner, pliant wills, and subservience
That Free Men should all best eschew in their establishment
So if by heat, so if by blood, so if by reason sharp
I offend, or I contend, I’ll surely hit my mark
Mild is well, and meek is good, when little is at stake
When all that’s right is up for grabs that is when I break
A sky like freshly melted lead and I am re-membered of that age so long ago when men stood atop the crops of living stone that grew like towers from the Earth, and carrion fowl
circled the sky searching for the dead.
The green of cyprus tall and dark, the hidden grasses bent beneath the menhired burden of a vanished race that raced the sun of every season to see who could catch the summer first.
Winters come, and yet is past, and still the grey and shadowed corners linger along the Elder Trails were men no longer read the signs
and the signs no longer signify.
A scarecrow raised like Rome’s own crucified to draw the ravens to his eye, so plucked away it cannot see any sight again but prophecy.
Still not enough is known to unknow anything. Worth unknowing.
Another bird, a hunting hawk, wending north of winter’s range will read no time until he marks the movement of a preying heart, and then picking from the scampering fields the blood and bones that once were knit, unmakes them for another day.
The bear scats, the fox turns, wolves howl, mountains rise, seas dry, roots rot, bones break, stones crack, echoes abound, vines creep, roads Wyrd, trails fade, streams cut, wounds bleed, words falter, men forget…
Tonight before bed I decided I would make an accurate and up to date accounting of my recent work output. Regarding my poetry.
As of tonight I have recently (within the past year and a half) written 279 individual poems.
That does not account for all of my older poems, such as those comprising my 6 completed books of poetry.
Nor does it account for all of the verse appearing in my novels, children’s books, and other writings. Nor does it account for any of my song lyrics or the 33 poems I have started but have not yet finished.
Nor does it account for any of my epic poetry or any of my longer works of verse. All of which I’ll have to account for later, when I have the time.
Of the 279 more recent poems, and the currently unfinished poems, I suspect I could create two new books of poetry, or maybe three, depending on the length of some of these individual poems.
Which would bring the total number of books of poetry I have written to 9, not counting epics, mythic poetry, and books of romantic and love poetry.
Wyrdwend 
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