Category: Poems

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Narcissus

Narcissus

Drug me with drugs
Slow acting, sensuous, sweet,
Co-mingle gin and musk,
Hashish and amber,
Let me drink and breathe
And hear slow, devious music

Until aroused
To subtle, languorous moods,
Until I see
Ochre and mazarine and purple
Emit lascivious sounds

Then I shall do
Through dark and gothic ruins,
Dray and golden mists
Down to a forest, green
With an old dream

I shall go naked
And magnolia and oleander
Datura and jasmine,
Whose blossoms will open and vaginally flower
In infinite time, for a relative hour,

Whose white, subminimal flowers
Will caress my breasts
And I shall perform stately,
Phallic arabesques
In the moonlight,
Pale and white

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Under the Hill

Under the Hill

Now while the sky is apple green
And the wind is still and the moon is ripe,
Come to the hollow under the hill
While the night is young and the evening thrills
To the thump of drums and the strum of strings
And the shrill cry of the pipe.

A girl and a goat are dancing there
In the hollow under the hill.
The goat is black and the girl is fair,
But his eyes are gold as her flying hair,
With the thump of drums and the strum of strings
And the shrill cry of the pipe.

His eyes are yellow and patient and wise
As a snake is patient, a sage is wise,
But the golden girl has demon’s eyes
To the thump of drums and strum of strings
And the shrill cry of the pipe.

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Sorcerer

Sorcerer

I see him tread a craggy path
Over dark hills, outlined against the sky,
In a flapping cloak, and his sardonic eye
Gleams with a joyous wrath

And he lifts his arms and behold
A flight of birds all gold
In the sunset carrying dreams,
Strange dreams from out of Africa and Spain,

Then in a harsh voice he spells the sun
And leaps and dances on its crimson touch
Casting distorted shadows on the moon
New risen.

I see him flinging out his cloak,
That swells and swirls like thick smoke,
That rushes outwards and expands
To engulf the houses in all lands.

Now, naked on the highest peak,
He pauses with both hands above his head,
He laughs and flings them outward with all his might
And above a million stars upon the night.

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Danse

Danse

The night, a huge black panther flecked with stars,
Uneasily allows the warm west wind’s caress.
The moon, disastrous golden banner, slightly smiles.

Off-stage, an orchestra complains of Love.
Center, a sad-faced page in clown costume
Danses slow, stately circles.
A werewolf, left, sings raucously,
A horrible small song.
While right, a vampire, fondling a skull,
Is also smiling.

Alto saxophone in the orchestra (sings),
“My love, my love, my love.”
Werewolf (sings)
“Oh moon, oblique and smiling sinister,
Oh, bloody promise in the sky,
Oh, beautiful dancer mine,
Betrothed, beloved –“
(He howls)

(Saxophone) “My love, my love, my love – “
(Werewolf) “Rot flesh and go down Kingdom
To a sunken, jellied sea
Where black stars and wicked women
Reel in infamy.”

The vampire, smiling still, regards the skull,
Which vocalizes in a rich, deep baritone.
(Skull) “Believe me if all those endearing young charms, etc.”
The ape continues dancing
(Werewolf) “O, night of stars that coruscate like semen spated in the womb of night –
O serpent women smiling sinister –
O, lovely dancer at the feast to be –“
(Saxophone) “my love, my love, my love”.

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The Garden

The Garden

There is a garden where Death has gone to sleep…
Dark Death like a pale tired boy nods dreamily,
For he is enamored of her and doth keep
Her luminous blossoms forever from decay.

There in the dusky day, in the dim air
Dreams, like the disturbing notes from a secret song
Shimmer and float between beauty and despair
In an ecstasy no hear endured for long.
And to this golden garden all lovers come.
Young lovers, happening on eternity
Where dark Death sleeps and dreams, there venturing some
Are briefly raised beyond desire or pity.

Raised to a pitch of beauty unendured
By faint mortality, where sobbing shakes the
Garden’s subtle silence, that immured
Sleep, from which inhuman labyrinth
Death awakes.

 

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Stonehenge

Stonehenge

The summer thunder chatters in the west
As though
The ghost of Caesar’s iron legions go
Behind the hills.

The ancient oaks are shadowy and still,
The mistletoe
Subservient in the argent of the glow
Of moonlight, waits the golden sickle’s will.

The woods await the thaumaturgic tune
That called the old gods beneath a younger moon,
And will await until the gods come back.
I know
They will return, who, going, left the slow
Still circle broken and the altar black.

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Pan

Pan

Do not lament this, who have known and lost me
With pale pastels and sounds of tuneless lyres,
I was the amber girl when first you found me,
The golden boy in the portal of new desires,
I was the wind of spring, the scent of roses,
I was the night, the garden, and I the fire,
The rod that wakes, the flower that disposes,
I the immortal singer, the song, the lyre.

I am the Autumn now, my winds are blowing
Blossoms of Summer barrenly they blow
Leaves and desires and summer hopes foreknowing
I shall be Winter and silence of the snow.

Still I am thine, O stricken heart, to follow
Past gale and glacier, where I brood alone,
Exultant, where all hopes and fears are hollow,
The core of steel within the heart of stone.

I, who am black and bleak with old disasters,
Was I not beautiful, and am I now the less
Than all the pale and pure and petty masters
That leave you now upon my wilderness?

Then will you date me, stinking and sardonic
Who called me, soft and lovely, by my name?
Embrace me then and feel my kiss demonic
Shatter the glacier and reveal the flame.

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The Fool

The Fool

I followed a lonely way
I followed a drifting star
And following ever, a beast behind,
But the star was far and far.

I left the cozy coral,
I left the comfortable land
To seek a dream in the dreamy sky
And a skirling song unheard.

I found a wonderful flower
That mirrored the dream in the air.
I reached to gather the flower in
For my close curling hair

And a little spotted snake
Struck from the golden bud…
I followed a lonely way
With poison in my blood.

I walked a dreadful way
In the jungle, sick and blind
With a quiet laughter overheard
And a monstrous beast behind

At last I turned at bay
On the narrow way I trod
And screamed aloud at what I saw,
For lo, the beast was God;

With the eyes of a laughing girl
And the flower in his hair
And the spotted snake about his throat
And his face was cruel and fair.

 

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Night

Night

Subtle and amorous
Lamia sings her love song on the evening
As is heard the alien, dubious song of the night bird
Or the purr of the lioness
In the dim, lambent dark
Or the soft disastrous word
Of murder
Following the extinguished spark
Into nothingness.

All while the subject of her languorous caress
Dreams darkly dreams
As voyaging Deathward, the transfigured Swan
Sings splendorous, sad things
Drifts deeply down and meets, with folded wings
The jeweled night
Or as the noon bright, desert sun dreams down
Into the smiling, upturned remanent of a face.

A Knife is beautiful, a jaguar
In motion is the embodiment of grace
And slowly in the quiet house in evening
I dream afar,
Seeking forbidden things on a black star
While, throatily Lamia sings
Her strange caress.

As strums the stirring croatali
As the leopardess doth sing,
As does the vulture, strident cry,
So does Lamia strum and sing and cry
As wanton as the setting of a star
In an ensanguined sea.

Dear dreadful dark,
Lean over me and press
The curtain of your awesome tenderness
Against my mind,
Mother of stars, the secret of your vast maternity
In the infinity
Of the deep scented terror of the night
As echoes long
Lamia’s doubtful song.

 

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Witch Woman

Witch Woman

I hear your voice low in the dusk
Like the notes of the harp player
That carve the still air
Into a sensuous and subtle imagery of sound

And my senses are drowned
By the scent of oleander and the musk
Of the datura dimly shining in the dark,
While your voice troubles the still air,

And I recall
An ancient garden and a secret call
And your slant eyes and your red hair
Engender dreams of days beyond despair

And under your sorcery I fare forth
To fabulous lands and meadows green with Spring
And caught on the gossamer web of evening
I behold incredible things no poet ever told.