A LITTLE WINTER

A LITTLE WINTER

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)

STONE IN MY SIDE

(THE BLOODSTONE)

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,

uncured by nothing until I Act…

THE COLD PILLOW

Upon the cold pillow lies the restless head of man, whose disgraced dreams, which would, or should, be all of the Visions of God’s own making, are instead bent to petty aims and empty theologies of belief whose only achievement is the eternal and endless fracturing of themselves into ever smaller shards of doubt and despair (dispair, disrepair)

The cold pillow which should support the soul of man in his wandring sleep to countless other worlds and others times records no hope of all it sees or hears behind the slumbring eyes which cannot speak of all they know except in cryptic slivers neath the silvered moon.

(fragments of two stanzas of verse from a dream I awoke from… this also gave me an idea for a Theurgical pillow I intend to design and have embroidered with scriptures, images, Ikons, etc. to inspire New Dreams and Visions while I sleep… I intend to do the same for an Ancient headrest.)

MY WIFE’S BODY

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…

HARD THE HAMMERSMITH – FIRST VERSE

HARD THE HAMMERSMITH

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…

THINGS LONG UNSEEN – FIRST VERSE

This morning, right after waking, I began this poem.

I wrote the first two stanzas in bed, in my bedside notebook, went downstairs, fed the animals, made breakfast for the wife and kids, and then sat down at my desk and hammered out the third stanza. It wasn’t hard. It flowed as if I had taken no break in between.

I started in on the fourth stanza which to me was absolutely brilliant (the best part of the entire work) and right as I got to the third line of the fourth stanza the power went out at the house, and for some reason my backup power fluctuated as well so that my computer shut down. By the time I rebooted I had lost the entire fourth stanza.

I tried reconstructing the stanza from memory but I was so pissed off and taken off guard by the unexpected power failure (why should that happen at the start of summer with not a cloud in the sky I ask you?) and by the delay in reboot time that I ended up producing a mere shadow of my original effort.

I’m still satisfied by the stanza, and the poem overall so far, and it is far from finished, but just to be honest the fourth stanza isn’t nearly what I produced the first time around. So I apologize for that. This is yet another valuable lesson in why I should never compose at my computer, but only in my notebooks.

Nevertheless I am pleased with the poem and when it is finally finished I suspect I will name it, Things Long Unseen.

That is, at least, the place-holder name I am giving it for now. Enjoy and have an excellent and productive and profitable week my friends.

 

THINGS LONG UNSEEN

I shall exceed all things, and having so excelled all things
Shall bow to me, not as brutish, mindless slaves but as one man
Instinctively declines his head to yet another in whom he recognizes
His equal.

The loss of me is not the less of me, and the lending of me
To another is no lack of either thing made true in itself,
For pushed on by High Labour where can I go but where
I am, and where I Am dwells a still fairer land than I may truly
Ever know, though God knows, how much I wish for such
Things long unseen

I shall excel all things, and having thus exceeded nothing
Shall bow to me, nor find an alien compass with which to navigate
That Long Frontier that I so long ago remembered in myself
Unequaled

The less of me is what is left of me, for the debt of me
To another is both the loss and gain in ourselves untrue,
Subsumed in Reckless Profits, destined where I know not that
We are, or when, or how, or why it is that we know these things
Improper in themselves, though we all know how much we wish for
Things Long unforeseen…

 

YEAH, THEY’LL DO THAT – FIRST VERSE

YEAH, THEY’LL DO THAT

She is a wonder of claw, fang, and hiss
Be careful if ever she growls
If she purrs first then mister
Something’s amiss
Something you missed or allowed,
But stroke her and feed her
And give her a kiss and tell her
That all will be well,
Rub her soft fur and play
With her tail
Until she is mended
And tame,
For my friend I must tell
That the end of this tale
Is ever and always the same

So if she complains
Come sun or come rain
Then just know
That her Nature excels, but
Other than that just what
Can you do?
For her nature
Is flighty as hell!

Oh, and also cats get that way
From time to time too…

BRAVE ANNA – FIRST VERSE

These are the lyrics of a song I began this past weekend. It is unfinished but I’m pleased with the start I made…

(painting: please see here – http://www.artbyfuentes.com/commissions/)

BRAVE ANNA

Brave Anna was fair
And thrice did she dare
To be with a man like I
I’d warn her away
Come night and come day,
I never asked her to die

Yet oh she would sing
Of all of the things
Our kisses, our embrace
Beloved
Of the sorrow she’d bring
Unless she could cling
To my heart, enlacing
Her love

Yes, Brave Anna was fair
And dark was her hair
It blew in the sea’s song-breeze
She’s laugh and she’d play
She’d lead me astray
So little was I at ease

Though how she would dance
Left nothing to chance
I was the captive
Not her
All the sorrow she’d bring
When the church bells would ring
Her passing to always
Recur

Brave Anna was bright
With her eyes did she spite
The doubts of a man like I
I’d wish her away
Though never she strayed
Thus did she end her life

Oh yes I would say
Both night and in day
I am a man of loss…

JOHN BARLEYCORN

THE LAST ONES

I offer this as my submission for the National Poetry Day. I am now at work on my fifth book of poetry.

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…

HARBINGER’S KEY – FIRST VERSE

HARBINGER’S KEY

The Wolf Winds howl on the March to the East
The Blood runs red at the Gathering Feast
The Young Men sing of the Slavering Beast
And the Old Men moan, “Where is our Peace?”

The Monstrous Scale as empty as Death
Measures the Nothing hung over the West
That labors like Murder to steal every Breath
From everything Living, the cursed and the Blessed

High in the Mountains, deep in the Sea
Something is stirring, Horrors set Free
To Harass and to Harrow as if by Decree
The Marrow in Man Bones, Harbinger’s Key

Hid in the Old Dark biding his Time
Lurks the Great Creature stuck in his Limes
His hatred his Quickstone to hasten his Climb
The Day soon approaches, Ruin his Rhyme

But deeper than Old Darks, great in his Weight
Diseased of his own rot, an Absolute Fate
Hatred is small match for his Poisoned Date
Swollen and bloated he waits at the Gates

The Dawns will all soon fall away without Light
The Strong will all tremble even the Night
For Old Dark and Unknown will rise in their Might
To obscure the Pale Earth from even God’s sight

Men think they know Evil but Evil is Young
Of Far Older Powers still songs can be Sung
For These are Approaching, Chieftains Among
The Slayers of Futures that Silence All Tongues…

____________________________________________________

An unfinished poem I began for Halloween. It will go into one of my books of poetry.

AS I GO – FIRST VERSE

AS I GO…

I became what I wrote
When I knew that I did
But I learned what I didn’t
When I showed what I hid,
Yes I mastered by doing
And not by the knot
That twisted I shouldn’t
Into what I forgot,
Yes I wrote what I was
But became what I wrote
And not just because
The words were the notes,
For I knew that I knew
And I learned what I did –
That my limits were lesser
The less that I hid,

Now I can’t say forever
That forever I’ll know
But I can say with pleasure
What I know I can show,
For time works a wonder
By passing along
What’s learned in the measure
What’s right and what’s wrong,
For often you find
That you thought that you knew
But by doing again
You discover it new,
So when men ask me why
I repeat what I know
I tell them I didn’t
But I’ll learn as I go…

THE LIGHT THAT MADE – FIRST VERSE

THE LIGHT THAT MADE

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…

 

 

AN ANCIENT RACE – FIRST VERSE

AN ANCIENT RACE

I came upon myself one day
Hoping there to find
Someone truly great and grand
Some One quite divine

Reflections of me seemed to prove
That I was all I thought
High and noble, quite advanced
Superior, self-wrought

To all the others I was king
At least so to myself
I was different than they were
And twice as good as well

No one could me anything
Was not my Image clear? (dear)
Me to everyone I met
Was what I made most dear (clear)

Then one day I found that I
My mind, my soul, and flesh
Was just as mortal as they were
And now not quite as fresh

The image that I fawned upon
The reflection I adored
Was but of human denouement
And mirrored self-amour

Now no greatness lingers here
No moral high and grand
Except this caution, yet my friend,
Like me, “you’re just a man…”

 

HE WHO GOES ALONE – FIRST VERSE

HE WHO GOES ALONE

He who goes alone, the solitary man
Through pits as black as hell
Cross even stranger lands,

Does navigate the darker realms
Knows them like his home
He who goes alone – by No Thing overwhelmed,

Though never without cost, to go unchaperoned
Unguided in the doubtful debt
In which such harm is grown,

The bitter hearts of men do swell
With endless, careless wrong, yet he who goes so long alone
Has still his citadel,

There is a wary wilderness, dreadful hard to pass,
A mountain steep, severe to climb
Each measured in an hourglass,

Wastelands wild with weary woe
Cover all the past, yet nothing
Can be lost at last to he who goes alone,

Watching in the listless night, moon and stars all torn
Mourning blood on sterile Earth
By which the damned are bourne,

A window to the waiting soul where torments long
Are sown, and he who ever goes alone,
Where does he now belong?

The ghosts of men make short repair
Facient in their aims, the Ghost of God
Remains aloof and hovers in the air,

Facinorous is the pointless tomb, and everything there shown
No one knows this more in Truth
Than he who goes alone…

 

FOR SOMEONE TO PAY – FIRST VERSE

FOR SOMEONE TO PAY

On Sunday morning, as I sometimes like to say, “I awoke to a bright dawn, but the dark night had followed me…” or, variously, “I woke to the memory of black things.“

I once knew a man, dark as the winter
He went out all green, then grew up ‘mong sinners
A submarine self of dark troubled waters
He wondered, he wandered, but found not the matter
That murdered by day, by night only hidden
By graves buried wrong, all the secrets unbidden
Corpse of the night all twisted and tattered
An uncanny sight, the silence is shattered
Not by a sound for death is still cold
Kin (ken) to so many or so they all told
A heart is a heart if it beats not or still
A man’s inner sin only lives when it kills
For dead men will flower like weeds in the ground
When sprinkled by showers of blood still unfound (unbound)
So in such winters terrible deeds
Flourish like summers of infinite seeds, and
The man who made harvest as green as the grass
Came back with a crop just as black as the last
So he wanders, and wonders, and still to this day
He searches inside him for someone to pay…

DO NOT THIS WORLD ALONE – FIRST VERSE

DO NOT THIS WORLD ALONE

I awoke again this morning in a black mood. Then as dawn approached and I lay in bed thinking of my as yet unborn grandchildren this poem came to me and the dark passed.

 

For you are young and sweet
But I am old and doomed
I’m summoned to my sleep
Yet you have yet to bloom

I tremble as I walk
You’ve yet to take a step
I mutter as I talk
You babble joy instead

You’ve yet to know the dark
I search the night for light
To everything you hark
My memories I fight

Dawn she calls to you
Dusk she calls to me
To you it all seems true
I’ve been too long deceived

You laugh and coo and crawl
I’m stooped and bent and broke
I’m burdened with it all
You’re free of weight and yoke

You see just what is near
I’ve seen things from afar
My eyes drowned in my tears
Your sight is still unmarred

You hear the small birds sing
You wonder at their calls
I hear the echoed screams
I know what soon befalls

If I could by (buy) some wish
Shield you from what comes
Would that be damned foolish
Or work of High Wisdom?

I do not know my child
I never knew with me
The world was often wild
Most bloodily conceived

I will tell you this
For it is all I’ve known
Keep God deep in your heart
Do not this world alone

or, variantly:

(Do not this world bemoan)
(You’ll not this world atone)

NEVER AND FOREVER – FIRST VERSE

NEVER AND FOREVER

So you never cross a frontier.

What is that to me? What is that to you?

So you perpetually bend the knee.

What is that to me? What is that to you?

So you cower for forever from everything around.

What is that to me? What means that to you?

So you never attempt some Great Thing, or much of anything at all.

What is that to me? Why is that anything to you?

So the world is as it is.

What is that to me? Who will change it now?

So you are just as you seem.

What is that to me? Who are you, to you?

So you live and breathe.

What is that to you? And what is that to me?

So evil grows and thrives.

What is that to me? Where are you then found?

So corruption long abounds.

What is that to me? When do you ensure?

So you are just as you are. So I am just as I am.

So the world burns near and far, so it seethes, and so it drowns.

What is that to me? What is that to you? What is that to us?

Yes, what is that to us?

And, what is that to you?

THE SAME IS THE SAME – FIRST VERSE

THE SAME IS THE SAME
(A Simple Ode to Not Getting It)

I once knew an old man who said this to me
“The same is the same til it isn’t you see.”

“What does that mean?” I asked of the man

“It means that the isn’t is part of the plan.”

So I queried again to see if I tracked
But he waved off my efforts, and asked what I lacked

“What I lack is your meaning, if you see what I mean!”

“Why I do,” said the old man, “and I highly esteem
That you haven’t yet got it, so let me help out
Though you’ll fare none the better I seriously doubt
If my statements seem lacking in substance and style
For my purpose is patent though soaked through with guile.”

”What mean you by saying, ‘your purpose is plain?’
When it’s riddled and wrapped in these vestments arcane?”

“Oh,” said the old man, “you’re confused by degrees,
‘See the same is the same til it isn’t you see!’”

“What’s with the riddles, the rhythm, and rhyme?
I haven’t the patience, the motive, or time,
Just tell me quite simply exact what you mean
There’s only one prophet, the profit foreseen,
So tell me quite clearly how true to do that
There must be an answer to fit in your hat
For all things are even unless they are odd
Just show me the method and on I will plod!”

”Exactly!” he told me, “You know it by now
A fox is quite crafty unless he’s a cow
The prophet who profits will see past the words
Everyone else will just think him absurd,
For the Wise Man his profit is built by the mind
Who sees into others to find what he finds
But the men who are stuck in the clay of the words
Cannot the future when once it’s occurred
That he can by convention control what’s to come
Or by formula master all things to succumb
So the same is the same til it isn’t you see
But to come to that meaning you must come quite free.”

So I left in a quand’ry, I left in some doubt
That he knew of his subject, or what he did tout
Yet since then I’ve measured the world and its men
Found them uneven, thrice even again
Not a king who could not be a pauper at heart
Not a peasant who might not some genius impart
Not a tyrant so strong I would bend once to them
Not a haughty pretender not given to whims
Not an expert or maven perfect in wares
Not a Wise Man among them whose Wisdom he shared
Without first giving counsel – as I counsel thee,
“The same is the same til it isn’t you see…”

A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY, AND … TWO FOR FIRST VERSE

Two for First Verse.  So, lucky you, you’ve got a twofer.

 

A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY

A little goes a long way if a little’s all you’ve got
A long way is a long way though and often costs a lot,

New is sometimes better if it’s really something new
Then again tis often just the useful bid adieu,

Yet the old is still the old because it’s worked awhile
That isn’t always e’re the case, but life is not a mile,

Is new improved – a treasure hoard that purchases the world
Or is it effete novelty that’s simply trimmed in pearl?

The newer goes a long way if your way is just so long
Then again the road is wild, and it goes on and on,

Fresher is the fresh man whose foot has yet to tread
Then again he knows not yet the dangers he must dread,

If I want newer thinking then the young are where I’ll start
But guides who know the jungle are the ones who know their art,

So give me lots of young men, and new, to carry loads
They often make the portage light, divert along the road

Yet if I must into the way where paths are dim and dark
Then let my scouts be old men, and let them know their parts…

________________________________________________________

MARX HE WENT TO MARKET

Well Marx he went to market
With theories great and grand
He sold them to the ignorant
In every foreign land,
At discount did they prosper
To fools they multiplied
In Truth they found no purchase
Yet with mobs they did abide,
Revolutions soon arose
With fires burning bright, and
Still the theories sold by Marx
Could not a dime incite,
Still what is that to theorists
Or professors in the clouds?
They packaged for their profit
Though no profit was allowed,
Well Marx he went to market
Just to find his market share, and
So he did ‘mong idiots
No Intelligensia to spare,
They took his empty theories
To spin out governments, and
That is what they’ve truly done
With dark and dim intent,
They convinced the public masses
They convinced the public schools
They tamed the dupes and gullible
Conscripted all the fools, yes
They sold Marx in their markets
In place of goods instead
Now markets teem with people
But no one has their bread…

MY POWER IN HER PLEASING

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.”

THE SORCERER’S TONGUE

THE SORCERER’S TONGUE

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.

THEY LONG…

They do not long conceal their face
With deceits framed on inner lies
Who seek to promulgate their aims
With patient work and longing sighs,

Their eyes reflective in their heart
Stare dead into the endless void
Of horrors spawned by theories vast
They would see true, not ere avoid,

The softer ones, the powdered plight
Those seeming meek with cunning tongue
Plan long into the moonless night
To write in blood what they’ve begun,

It does not matter that they bow
To Tyrant Chaos and his Reign
It matters only that they grow
The death inside with bitter pain,

‘Ware those long who wrap their face
With endless craft to gild their goals
Within them they have souls erased
They long the same to you enroll.

HAUBERK AND MAEL – A DREAM IN VERSE

I woke this morning with these lines running through my head. Don’t ask me why, I’ve never understood how this crap really works. This kinda thing just happens to me from time to time.

HAUBERK AND MAEL

Jerkin and wainscoat, both fitted well
Shield trimmed with cold steel, hauberk and mael

Bodkin and longbow, employed at range
Pierced through at angles, hauberk and mael

Gorgelet and gauntlets, painted with shells
Baldric beseasoned, hauberk and mael

 

Also there were a bunch of other words and terms in my head (I wrote them all down) some of them archaic, or archaic or foreign versions of better known terms (such as mael for mail) which are also plays on words (mael also meaning bald, shaven, defenseless, blunt, hornless, the Welsh saint Mael, a Keltic name for Ireland and Wales and Brittany, and of course a variation on the armor – mail – yeah, I looked it all up), and weird forms of other words such as wainscoat.

(Which I suppose to probably be related to waistcoat, though perhaps my mind had created a different neologism altogether – wanescoat – a faded or shrinking coat, or coating. It was hard to tell. I didn’t see the verses or words, just heard them as I woke, so I used wainscoat. Maybe it was supposed to be “wanescoat.” Don’t really know at this point what was meant.)

Gorgelet also seems a strange (though poetic) variation on the term gorget (the plated neck armor of a knight) but the word also seems to me to imply something woven over or covering the gorget, like a piece of painted silk or cloth. Maybe a piece of decorated heraldry. Just a working theory.

My “verse dreams” are weird in that way, the way they alter terms and languages and definitions. Oftentimes I create new words in my dreams, and then later on have to figure out what they probably mean, or how to relate them to other or more established terms.

Finally there were also some stand-alone lines that I woke up with, such as, “Great gloppen and gore” but they were not part of stanzas and I don’t yet have any idea of where to put them.

It’s all sominpathy to me at this point.

I have a feeling though that this one is gonna be like pulling teeth. For some reason it wants to be written, but I don’t know why or how to proceed right now.

So I’m gonna let it sit and set awhile in my mind and see where it all goes. And what it might mean.