Saturday, April 26, 2014

Eve’s Eldritch Opus (Ebony-sonnets)



Eden’s Woman (Part I of III)


Love denied her that thing it so desired.
Without warning the gulf got narrower!
And from her lips, apple-juice dripped, dark.
For the moment, mindful pride shattered.
She was after all, mere clay, subject to stay:
He was man, all man, just man and then some.
She was all woman, and unlike any soul.
Now she had on her lips, an apple cold stain.

Then she realized the significance…
He had trembled, at the thought of her nerve:
Now a vassal: of flesh, bone and soul, for Satan! 
He paused from his work, looked up at her mane.
His arms flushed out to her, to her parse.
She had indeed, brought heaven down to gaze.



Eden Dethroned (Part II of III)

At the sound of her voice, love struck a blow—
Or better, like a bell, struck deep from Hell.
Dethroned by the netherworld; a hard blow.
In his whirling brain, he loved hopelessly:
In that moment of madness why did he?
It was a way he could express his love!
The lofty emotion he had felt for her.
It was a love that comes to all lovers…!

It came to him, in a whirlwind of fire.
For he had never been in love before.
His eyes like the sun, transfigured his face.
His nakedness penetrated his brain.
He remembered God had called him out,
Wondered where he had gotten that apple.




The Owl of Eden (Part III of III)


Her eyes have seen the steles of Satan.
Fire like foam coming out of a thick sides:
She has felt the deadest stain come alive!
The owl of Eden hoots, like a scant sear:
The memory of loss, will cling for years.
The skull of man, now will stare at the sky!
And women will now give birth, cry and die.
She brought no glory for her man, to spare.

Eden now is dust, Samaritan dust.
The sphinx fly’s over its suckling skies:
Where Arab, Jew and Gentile have warred and died!
Here Baal, Elohim—were ridiculed, decried.
Under the indecipherable weary sky.
Here lives the monoliths of Eve and death.


Now here, lives the legends of Eve and death.  
Ebony and crystal, monoliths, eyelids.
Only the toad has found here, a place to live.
Here still the owl lives in oblivion!
And Adam, a monument to man’s demise.
Here on both sides, all men walk with no pride.

Note: Part written 4-25-2014, Part two and three 4-26-2014.

Written in sonnet form: Spenserian, Italian, or Caudated form.  (No: 4325)

The Eldritch Labyrinth (The Poet’s Magnum Opus, in Strange Poetry)

The Eldritch Labyrinth
   (The Poet’s Magnum Opus, in Strange Poetry)  
      

   by Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. h.c.
Illustrations by the Author




Index (four poems in English and Spanish see sigh :)



1—Sandalwood & Ivory  
2—To My Seraphim
3—Ebony in Eden
4—Orion’s Odyssey
5—Progenitors of the Neolithic
6—Corridors  of Tartarus
7—Vulgarism  & Ecstasy
8—Eurydike’s Incarceration (Par I of II) & Eurydike’s Demise (Par II of II)
9—The Devil’s, Ominous Windless Chamber
(In Three Parts) Part of the Original “Eldritch Carvings”
10—Voyage of the Sirus
(Siting of Noah’s Ark) Part of the Original “Eldritch Carvings”
11—Amduscias      Part of the Original “Eldritch Carvings”
12—The Spider in its Web (A poem from: “The Midnight Ghoul”)
13—Ghoulish Vaults
14--∞ in the Valley of the Beast   (Armageddon) In English and Spanish
15--∞ Orion’s Orchard (In English and Spanish/poetic prose)
16—the Lost Millennium
17—the Blind Labyrinth (The Vision)
18—Rodents in the Pantry
19—Ebbing Whispers (Morning in Lima)
20—an Inscrutable Night (…or, ‘A Strange Woman’)   
21—Death Passed Me Once (In the Valley of Days)
22—The Mantic ore’s Apocalypse (Agony in Eternity)


              Sandalwood & Ivory   

               



When I was a stormy young lad and then some!
A tad under the influence—
From the soul of the tree
I took sandalwood (for life was scantly);
From the dead elephant, Ivory!
I took what I could, to live as I should.
And all that I took, I paid for!
And then some—
And when asked, avowal to nothing:
To lessen the world of something!

When I got old, I gave back twofold,
Everything worth giving, except for
My books, and soul (and a scanty living)…!
And then some—
And that too, I paid for—
And when asked, avowal to nothing:
To lessen the world of something!

           When I was a young lad, and a little more!
When I was an old man, and a little less!
This is what I did, this is how I lived:
And then some—

When I was a lad you could call a lad
When I was a bloke, you could call a bloke
And when I was half a bloke, and half lad
Christ never lifted his finger prints, from my soul!
And then some—

No: 4308 ((4-19-2014) (12:20 a.m.))


 To My Seraphim



Forever and forever, my Seraphim, my Seraphim!
Alone here on earth I live, alone I shall die…?
And trade truth for certainties, — yet all is uncertain!
And I listen to the lies, and push the gravest ghosts aside:
Call them fables, list I fear most;
And wait for the wolf in his baaing hood,
The white hooded wolf, flocked with dark leaves!
The one I pushed aside: web-dark deep in the mind.

I live and sleep, down deep, in a dew dipped lair,
One that none of us, lie innocent in; here, loping and
Hoping, and blithely talking, we tell our gooseherd tales—
Animal eyed, ding-donged tales; hearthstone tales!
We are the wolf and the fox, the sly and the meek, the thief!
And we tell them like bleating, sweeping homespun 
Enchanters:  gobbling up attics long gone from our sight…
As the world spins silently apart!  —as the tall told tales
Are told far and wide, with rose-shire red eyes: we eat,
Force-fed, flock-falling hypocrisy, fleecily —!

The saga of man, leaps and never sleeps, it is:
Bleak, boogied, and bowed: yawning for the clouds!
And here I sit, writing in a cyclone of silence. 

Forever and forever, my Seraphim, my Seraphim:
This, is what I was part of when I lived: shielded by you!—
I, but a mere winged-wrist, worn-out bed-reddened bird,
In the wooded, woods, with woos and owls and tall tailed
Devils, dell mooned devils; and shielded by a Seraphim,
Awaiting to be brought home by, God’s Holy Ghost!

Written 20th of April, 2014 /No: 4312


Ebony in Eden




Ere, before men were men, or could be called men!
God had an ultimate plan.

In the cruel cradle of time—
Muffled in the laden air, the Moth of Hell hides!
With ivory poisoned teeth, he will bring
Tragically bring, man’s solo plight—
Bring ebony-darkness into Eden …

And they wept, husband and wife,
At each and every twilight—
As ebony flowers fell from heaven!—
Forlorn, but not to be forgotten.
No longer to know their former place.

Yea, Grace was not to be destroyed,
But Eden could not be built on sin—


Written 20th of April, 2014 /No: 4313


Orion’s Odyssey




They fell from the sky, the Samarians…
(so they say)
Perhaps, part of the Antediluvian Race.
The odyssey took place in Orion’s
Rock crystalized porphyry, —some
Conspicuous relative planet, 10,000 B.C.
An aureole light, a radiance circled
Their bodies, as if a deity!—
Naught, for their solitude
They sought an equal planet.
And through the mountains and valleys
They wondered in spirit like form
As if of the gods, like the lotus earth
And became plentiful, and more!
A paradise ecstasy, they bred to live
A thousand years, and could see the
Star that is the farthest; and left no written
History, only the flowers of Hades,
The asphodels.
Hence, they ruled the world, until whence,
Elohim, saw and heard the madness of them,
And with a full chalice equal
Broke the foundations of earth
And thus, came forth the deluge!

No: 4314 (Written 4-21-2014)
By Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. h.c.
Copyright © April, 2014


 Progenitors of the Neolithic


We buried Adam, with Eve in an intense winter
With only shrunken trees and frosted levees to watch over them.
We left them staring at the musty wall,
The earth above their heads—

We, so long, so far, so distant from God!
We searched as if for something lost, but never near it!
Eternity between us and Him.

We, were like the animal, unknown, not even prophesied!
We were like under the grass, the secret roots the wind passed.
Mute tongues, for we had no language, naked like beasts.

We shivered in the quiet air, before they came,
They left us lonely, to oblivion, nothing;
Our task was done.

Dead eyes to greet dead eyes!
And ashes that once was red….

We left no mark to show we were here,
Although a few, left their bodies lying still and deep.
We were before them, before the Neolithic Age!

We were: Homo erectus, and Homo habilis, 
Until the Neanderthal came, and then, thereafter—
The Primeval Protagonist, Adam!

God had this paleontological plan,
Before men could be called men,
Before humans became human—

A kind of time-warp fantasy we thought,
Or had we thought, we would have thought!
And thereafter, we became extinct!

Written 21th of April, 2014/ No: 4314 / Note: Homo sapiens, date back to about 40,000 B.C., the Neanderthal, became extinct by 65,000 B.C., and Homo habilis can date back as far as two million years. The Sumerian Race is said to date back to 248,000 B.C. Now if we put Adam and Eve into their natural habitat, minding the gaps, and there are gaps in the chronology of time, Adam is in the Neolithic Age, let us say, 7000 to 8000 B.C. Thereabouts. On the third day of creation, God made, or created, had the earth yield seed-bearing plants, why? So the land could be tilted. So man could eat. For on the sixth day, he created animals, and thus, man was the last on the list, why? At the time of Adams birth, there was an estimated five million people on earth. If I need to say more, you missed the point.



Corridors of Tartarus
 (The Lore of Lilith)





With poppy Crimson Eyes,
That bound me with a spell—
Took me through the corridors of Tartarus,
Took me down a hill in Hades!
To see the queen of Hell.

My mind became an aquarelle
And she became this unfixed villanelle!
And, I, I became nil as a nullified bell…
A bell that is just a shell of the bell, empty.

And then I saw her, a strange creature!
And in her eyes, an oval amethyst;
A whispering of the devil behind them…
A stir of a wakening wind—within!

To her chin, mouth, bitter strange,
Snarled and twisted limbs, came, within
This vision—this haunting vision, eerie:
I said, inside my head, queerly:
‘She walks with the dead—‘; and then
Someone said: “Her name is: Lilith…”
       dearly!

Written 20th of April, 2014/ No: 4315
Note: Legend says, Lilith was Adams first wife, and thereafter, became Hell’s first queen.



Vulgarism & Ecstasy


All night I watched his arms touch hers,
She seemed to be timid and afraid, sitting
At a table with some friends, the Arab
Seemingly the guide, in disguise:
All night he sought the poisonous fruit of her!
Yea, I thought he sought the bitter rapture
Without her consent—
The gall that intermingled with her myrrh
Sweet cicely—; and in this small Cairo Café,
His blood burning in his veins, I tried to stir
Her away…lest she be drawn into his love-poison!
Torment burning, he tried to shoo me away
With vulgarism, and profanity; she,
A plain beauty, in an intoxicating night!
And she stayed with him in this intolerable foul.
And as I saw her in his car, as they drove away
Her eyes: something bitter to endure…
While his were swooning for caresses, —this,
Was beyond my own dim comprehension:
She looked as if she was drifting to oblivion,
And he, he staring into ecstasy

Written 21th of April, 2014/ No: 4316
From an experience while in Cairo, 11998


Eurydike’s Incarceration (Par I of II)



She lies on a heap of straw on a dirt floor, by her idiot
       husband, which is never changed, which becomes more
       and more musty and odoriferous—day by day!
As the guard opens the narrow window to feed her, it is stifling
       in there, he can scarcely breathe the stuffy air.
It is impossible to distinguish anything until her little hands grab
      the bread, then he perceives her half-dressed, in the poorest
      of rags thrown over her body, and the most loathsome boils
      on her skin, her: thunderous hair, eyes feverish, cheeks thin,
      sunken in, her flesh pale and mortified—her limbs twitching
      unceasingly—human degradation.
  
  Her husband howling and whimpering...
  She has little to no strength to raise her body without his
       assistance; it is near to impossible, and the few times she
       has tried, has collapsed, yet she does not cry: collapse yes,
       but does not cry: and tries again from sheer exhaustion.
Prone on the floor she lives otherwise, on that heap of straw.
While her idiot husband, lives in his own private world:
       eyes in some bottomless glint, some unknown kind of
       madness, despite his  misfortune… come what may.
Otherwise he simply crawls along the sides of the wretched
       walls, like an animal.

 They can feel the warmth of the bonfires in the square,
       a thin smoke hangs over the whole area…


Eurydike’s mind whispers, ‘See what Alexander’s death
       has given rise to—yes, to  all this…!’


Eurydike’s Demise        (Par II of II)



In Eurydike’s walled up tomb, filled with filth and excretions,
       fed on bread and water, and the pity of the guards,
       with no light in the night, just the sounds of the guards
       they lived, like mice.
Philip was good company though, and perhaps more her
       fault, than his, where he now was, and thus,
       she fed him her bread, more often than not.
Somehow he didn’t seem in despair, in that, it was not
       his nature, he was like a sparrow living from day to day,
       and somehow found himself, this way—unknowingly.
It came to pass within a month, they were released,
       Philip, trying to protect the queen who was thrown to
       the ground by the dark guards, and then they looked
       at him, stabbed him several times, until he was dead—
Whereupon, they allowed the Queen to pick her own death, she
       hung herself, with the help of the men.
And that was the end, the very end, of the Little Queen of
       Macedon and her idiot husband....


Note: #3353 (Written between: 5-11-2012/5-27-2012)ç
Part of the original poem: “¨Feast of the Wolfhound” an Alexandrian: Epic


The Devil’s,
Ominous Windless Chamber (Part I of III)


His hands tremble, and his heart pounds.
Something grabs his throat—
His horny head,
His egg-shell eyes, are shut!
His shark-teeth grind—
Screams seep out, 
It does not help
His chains are strong, he is loosely bound.

He beats his chest and cracks his face;
With scorpion legs, he kicks his belly.
He snatches from the wall dirt to eat.
He stands covered in brackish blood;
Worms watching, watching everything
Waiting—waiting, to make their move!...

He drops his head, and starts to moan  
From dust to dust, he lives and dies,
Little by little, all alone…


Lucifer’s Echoes   (Part II of III)
The Ominous Windless Chamber


There is no wind
To carry Lucifer’s echoes—
There is no sun to Earth’s netherworld!
Who then can hear the Devil’s cry?
             Chained in iron-shackles, alive!

Seized by terror
Turned pale like death…
Chained against a granite wall!
Archangel of blood and death—
Cries his dreadful lightening calls!

He cries, he bellows storms; with the
Staunchest stink, of a thousand years!
While the rats gnaw at his retched knees
No longer a silver-tongue, to plead!
Broken like a wild stallion, he groans!


Lucifer Moans   (Part III of III)
The Ominous Windless Chamber



“Let me drink, moisten my lips!
Let me disappear—
Where are my weary beasts to free me?
Where is my rope to climb this keep?
Woe! Woe! Let me melt, or vanish!...

“Sticky is the Dirt is my teeth
The darkness squats at me, —Insects
Crawl on knees, like drunken living clay;
My talons are broken, for another day; and
My wings, but ghostly shadows for prey!

“So Damned! Thy moans fall from thy lips
       and pores!
I beseech thee, Lord of Lords: Yes, I was
Once, the Morning Star—
I bow to the epiphany!   Bury me,
In silence, so I may moan no more!”

                 —dedicated to my mother: Elsie T. Siluk, 11/04 #372 (who liked a    
                 Spooky move and poem, and remained a good Christian to her death)


Voyage of the Sirus
(Siting of Noah’s Ark)




…in icy outer space today—
“Earth rising, as if from the dead”
I heard said (from radio waves;
perhaps lost for some five-thousand
years, in some far-off galaxy…),
That the Sirus ship was nearby—
The Captain at its helm:
That Earth was doomed
Like its moon,
And humankind was staggering
As if clung to clay, —
As an ark flooded on its way…
“I wonder if we can have her now”,
Said the Captain at the helm.

#453 [1/3/04]



Amduscias
[…and the Earth Shaker]




In the bloodless corpse underground world,
where beings and creatures have webbed
and eagle clawed feet, hypnotic eyes,  and
wings of feathers, and mammal like breath,
along with striking and unimaginable forms,
the lusterless dead, await to usher in
a forthcoming epoch with Lucifer their liege
the once Earth Shaker, now bound and chained!
Amduscias, awaits with Botis, the gatekeeper
of Tartarus, a thousand-years with his legions
on high alert, anticipating orders, to again
dominate a short while, on earth…

#398 12/7/04


The Spider in its Web 
      

The spider in its web
Wants to live, and let live,
List you get caught in its web!
It will give life in birth…
And in order to survive
It will sleep with an eye open;
And like man, be true to itself!

To die, likewise—it has no plan
More often than not, like man!

 [#498 2/19/2005]
Poems from: “The Midnight Ghoul” March, 2005



Ghoulish Vaults

Gates and walls, lie still in the Ghoulish Vaults— where there is no wind—; here shadows lurk about: foul beings, reek unseen, in a land called “Doom”, filled with nameless rooms…. Here, mysterious scrolls, and worms and toads live; —here, the scrolls dare to tell the dead what lays ahead, in this invisible tomb.  Strange as it is, raving with madmen curses and clowns, — the doomed and dead, read the black books, with dread….

And alongside corrodes crawl, ominous creatures, with shapes, and shadows undetermined by man, not of this world: unearthly and strange. Here, only unbridled spirits remain; here, in this monolith world, where ghouls scream!

Written:  5/16/04. #821


In the Valley of the Beast
[Armageddon]





(In my time :) They were assembled for the feast, the banquet of victory, in the Valley of the Beast, the Valley of Armageddon! 

The vaults of Hell now were opened, to assault the nations of the earth: hence, Hell spoke:
       ‘Cursed is to those who do not heed these words: join us in the Valley of the Beast, for war!’

And so the world sat waiting on war, with blood soaked knees, in the Valley of the Beast. And they came from far and near: from bog, valley and woodlands, mountains and the seas; from the north, east; and far-west—brother against brother (to fight for the Beast, in the Valley of Armageddon).

They came from Hell’s abyss, commanded by none other than, Agaliarept, Lucifer’s Henchman: with hissing, clutching at the feet of nations, until they cried: “War, war, war…!” And there they stood with flaming swords—and weapons galore, and many died caked with blood up to their thighs, as the fury roared—two billion, two billion, maybe more, died; and thus, the Prince of Darkness was shackled for a season, but he will be back— as it is written!

 Note: written at the Café “Tarata” Lima Peru, 5/1/2006 [afternoon, during lunch). No: 1510



Orion’s Orchard
[Poetic Prose]



In the universe, the one that surrounds the world (perhaps the mind as well)—someone once threw a ball into dark matter, dark energy. After that that someone created, gravity—I do believe—and threw it somewhere out and over his head, and it exploded—; from man’s way of thinking, it caused a Big Bang, somewhat in that unseen form of matter that pulls the universe—supposedly this way and that way, thus creating the great expansion, that has gone on since who knows when, again man’s speculation would say, fourteen billion years, give or take: which slowed everything down a bit, and its thrust (its push, threw everything in all directions) which is still keeping it airborne: carried by the shove that was set in motion; hence, when it loses its momentum, it will crash, I do reason, and all that is left—again  I do reason, will be the ball (its substance: what is hanging onto it, in it): that is all that will be left—I repeat, everything else just: waves, just waves in nothingness: waves that were made by that One person who forced out,  as a result, nothingness and all that it created will come to some kind of a standstill (I replicate): —it has to: for what will carry it—when all the engines that run the universe weaken, and the nuclear force and the electromagnetism collapses? When the protons and neutrons no longer come together in the nucleus of an atom, and no longer do the great galaxies spin fast enough, and thus fly apart. Save that, that someone we—most of us that is—call God, does not create something else out of some kind of a new nothingness.
       It’s how it was, how it had to be, how else could it have been: all this nothingness come about to surround the world, with all its “t’s” crossed, and “I’s” dotted, with its universal gravitational balance. We normally don’t think this way, lest we want our minds to become mad.
       I heard a voice in this dream I had within my mind, it said: “I am immortal, I sit behind the suns, and write epitaphs, for all the living things, then I open up their lips, an endless task it seems at times: the zenith of life comes from nothingness—and I, I alone hear their dying wish: to remain, to be: to some extent, to be like me forevermore, come to my eternity. Eyeless faces, pale and un-molded, that is what you all were once, but by my graces so you all became something more than nothing.
       “Orion’s illumed by my side, showers me like a rainbow with its gasses, breathless orchard: it is the magnificent mocker of the universe: perhaps you would call it such.  Hence, should I touch, only touch it (lest I destroy My own makings): only touch its burning drums, put my finger into its aflame winds—what I created it all out of—nothingness, the horse’s –head would roar, as if into a merciless, pitiless volcanic eruption, yet the moat around my untouched garments, it would never reach—and with the beckon of my finger it would go silent.
       “The Universe is like a squeezing viper at times, a sacrificial rip in all its proportions, the magnitude that  I’ve carved out of the thrust, as you call it—or have called it, from the push: from end to end, or as you have now proclaimed, its endless, end.
       “You see, and you don’t see, that I created all this out of oblivion   at different stages with different utterances, and when you study this more, you will understand it more, you will understand me more, why your existence is, at all. It is not that I need you that I molded you out of clay, pasted you together from that thrust, twist, wave, and roar— because that was all from emptiness; but it was from me to you, the gift of life, and that is called love.”

#1366 6/5/2006; written while at the El Parquetito Café in Miraflores, Lima, Peru, one afternoon (reedited, 7-2012) Reedited 11-2012


The Lost Millennium

In a corner of the world
There was a land called Sumer
Whose waters reached?
The Euphrates Valley and the
Syrian Desert, its high plateau.
As a result, the mud of two northern streams
Created a delta, with a pitiless sun
But rich was the soil, as anywhere on earth!
And man here made his home:
This was the beginning. Diversified
By marshes and reed-beds, rivers
Flush with their banks...!

After the Great Flood, retreating
Waters and cultivation took place.
Hence, into Sumer the giants of old
Went, degreed a civilization, among
The dark-haired people; sporadically
Circumstances would promote social unity.

And there was Susa, Musyan, Elam
And the Persian Gulf—Mesopotamia;
And Queen shub-ad, who created style.
And pottery formed, and temples were born.
And kings came and left. Like King
Gilgamesh: And thus came: gold vases,
And royal graves at UR, and the
Sumerian hymn and they hummed
To the gods; and the villagers wore
Garments of sheepskins, and molded
Clay figurines, roughly chipped.
From crystal, they wore necklaces:
Of all kinds, and some with beads.
This was the lost millennium.

They thought back then, somehow or another,
Virtue was a necessity for the gods, thus
Came sacrifices and the daily ritual,
And spells that fix and bound:
Man hoping to remain engaged, to keep
The favor, of the Gods. Thus, feast-days came
And went; animals killed for rituals, like flies!
Barbarism, perhaps, but that was life.

It drew the gods, and man’s moral judgment.
Prompt, the gods exercised their power,
And man then started to build statues
To their likeness, and now human sacrifice even
Found its way: with magic from the dismembered
Angelic beings; those who gave birth to giant children,
And was earth’s unusual phenomenon.

Astrology was born, Sumerians now ruled
The skies; astronomical knowledge came
From the gods too, and the gods (those angelic beings)
Came from the sky: ecclesiastical creatures!

Mesopotamia came under Sumerian rule,
And Ur, Lagash and Nippur honored the
Moon-god. And then came more public works.
And it became the Sacred Way,
And the walls of the Ziggurat [Temples]
Were built. Sanctuaries, with an inner court,
And doors decorated that lead to narrow chambers;
And to the Holy of Holies. Shrines, sacred vessels:
It was an unusual time, and phenomenon
...platforms, brickwork, statues, gods and goddesses
Oil-jars, a lost dynasties; a lost millennium.

#1522 10/19/2006/ Published in the Magazine the Arab Magazine


Blind Labyrinth
(The Vision)



A round the world, men shall fly, in less than a clap of an eye—
And death shall fill the world with woe—in the blind labyrinth, lives the fool!
And in those days, the world will be turn upside down…

And I found in these visions: soon to be, from the roots of trees, blood soaked bones and leaves—
And no city shall rise in those days, all lost in a hurricane of dust and haze—
And by the devil’s side I see, a purple dressed henchmen from Hell!

Under water, men shall live, sleep and eat, and ride the currents deep—
In red, black and pale green: waiting, just waiting are these submarines!
To perhaps sink unknown ships, and lands, below their knees!

Wonders shall we see, from land, sky and sea— these are awesome days
Indeed: water, food scarce like the plague…

Russia, nor the Middle East will submit, to the United Nations, or the West!
And to the world an end shall come, for no man or nation will live as one!

No: 4316/4-22-2014
(Visions from 1984) 


Rodents in the Pantry


I must be very delicate now, and pull the rodents from the walls!
Take from their jaws, gnawed bones, give them back to persons yet unknown.
I must study each face in detail:
Some plump, some old, some flabby—pale and pall: some lean, some fat some long and tall.
Thus, I grasp them by their throats, one and all, as they hiss and squirm and choke—their eyes moist with grief, some even older than I, I believe.
They croak, and arch their spines, with quickened fingers, hackneyed
I squeeze them blind—
Go back to your subterraneous world of limitless horror and misery, I yell!
But I hide them in the pantry still: a spectacle for a frenzy: I handle them quite delicately.

No: 4317 (4-22-2014)


Ebbing Whispers

Receding whispers—of nature are all around me.
The opal sun is hot on my back, with a piercing touch.
The earth and the ocean have been quiet this morning
In Lima—
My mind is voiceless for once. Through the calm-still,
I watch the cloud-shadows float over head—
They’re bleak, ebbing, fading into the dusty-blue!
I think the earth is rehearsing behind my back,
For something cruel, and for a bigger audience.
After lunch, during my midday nap, I was awaken,
An Ebbing earthquake woke me!

No: 4321 (4-24-2014)


An Inscrutable Night  
(…or, ‘A Strange Woman’)   




The wind blew warm, in Rome,
       The night was soft and regal
We lounged on the Spanish Steps
And talked at an Italian table.

Slender with a familiar beauty
       Amusedly, like someone I knew
Drawing my mind like a magnet
With her strange-haunting moods.

With a Germanic air of culture,
       The world’s debonair passing by,
She was courteous, suave and friendly,
       But why, to a stranger such as I.

For hours we sat and talked
       In a lulling, cadence like tone,
She weaved a charm of uncertainty,
       While drinking the wine of Rome!

The sun-set, over the plaza-walk
       And the candle on the table shined!
And to a toast to her fatherland—
       Her glass clicked to mine.

Now I sit and ponder, those two days
       Of that stranger who happened by,
So alike, so mystic, so courtly,
       With Chris’ inscrutable eye.

But I know Chris is long dead,
       And can another look so alike?
For I when the stranger left the table,
       Death was in her eyes.


4-23-2014 (No: 4318)
Note: the poet here uses Cross-rhyme to express his prosody, and theme!



Death Passed Me Once
(In the Valley of Days)




Death returns: it found no resting place,
I saw it in flight last night—(it passed me once,
overhead) beneath the last sparks of twilight—!

Death has wings, you know, I saw it descend,
it glides through the valley of days, in peacefulness…
yet—its  tail leaves shadows of grief, and pain,
to return at dawn, blue-bellied full—,
as if it had swallowed a whole whale.

Death, is always hungry it seems, and has an
invisible web nearby, always waiting, waiting,
likened to a spider waiting for a fly!

No: 21210 (12-2007)


The Mantic ore’s Apocalypse
(Agony in Eternity)



Oh, who will slay the Mantic or?
The torrent beast of Tartarus, of mythological times!
The man-headed lion beast, ebbing out of the depthless abyss!—
From eons of darkness, for the apocalypse—
(man’s day of reckoning)!
For death has summoned his voracious and unquenchable will;
His cunning grip, to interrupt life on earth…
(and should not God, himself step in, he will)
In spite of those who might have lived, had he not appeared
Will now come to an impalpable death, and disappear.

The mantic ors, with brazen teeth, moonshot eyes, have these
Impenetrable poisonous tails: ill days, and dubious nights lie ahead.

He comes with an irresolute soul; broken and ruinous: he has
Nothing to lose, so he’ll bring doom, to all Satan’s foes.
He is an incubus, a nightmarish burden.
He knows his plight, that there will be agony in eternity—
That he will be gorged with stones and, thorns, ripped to his bones
Perhaps chained to some permanent grotto wall—
Thus he comes unrepentant, in revolt, to menace man:
His rod is his stinger, on his tail;
Hidden in quiet shadows, ready to sting…

He is an incarnate spirit, given the body and form of his nature!   
His stinger, akin to a poisonous snake, he uses with bliss,
For the one he adores, the one who was born before the sun
Was shaped; the fallen pestilence of heaven: Satan…!


Written 4-25-2014 (No: 4324)