Abattoir, thy cover black:
Written in red blood:
Spells within thy fabled stack?
Mud, become a flood.
Now to brew some trouble, sirs!
Grab some land up high!
Mother Entropy murmurs!
Chaos, keeping dry?
Unleash the primal forces!
O rivers, running red?
Looking dark in our sources!
Humanity, bed!
Tympani, tornado.
Quahog clam, pie of quince.
Groundhog, shadow? Even so.
Four leaf clover mints.
Raspberry bush, hollyhock.
Gather well, honeybee.
Belladonna, blighted balk.
Vile the vintage, flea.
Schedule, on the third weekday.
Doom and disarray.
Debts cyclopean, repay.
Help them lose their way.
Dismay, dismantling. Starling:
Mournfully sheep sing.
Monsters love. To altar bring.
Machine, maddening...
Sting of sadness, great is grief.
Strong beyond belief!
Lawyer, judge, thy legal brief?
Coral, build a reef.
Black widow, thy fabled mark.
Through a knothole seen.
Moonlight, light path after dark.
Glitch the gangrel green.
Flickering flame, wax candle's gleam.
How to extinguish?
Air. Snuff out. Cut off the stream.
Cover up the dish.
Hellfire, bloom. O woodland, burn.
Ghost, hide in the leaves.
Pain, approval, taciturn.
He who loves, soon grieves.
Life, red ruins. Fain, fast fade.
Silent is the shade.
O for those who were played, glade?
Blighted, bound, bombed, bade.
Will-o-the-wisp, deep the bog.
Follow where it goes?
Light, thy beauty. Slick the slog.
Carrion for the crows.
Tiger in the tall grass?
He's waiting for a meal.
O young suitor, lass? Best pass.
Never shall ye heal.
Vicious viper, poison pit.
Well, we should have quit.
Firefly, how to keep lit? Flit.
Otherwise get bit.
Slit throat, O anodyne? Helped?
Seemed like he had died.
Holluschickie, how you yelped.
Children, woe betide...
Sulfurous pipettes steamed the last omega-crystal, the sore branch leeches its last resplendence of the season, and bookish kept in the bow of the festoon of leaves, and simple guurlick fabled and abreeze, and so the fruit spins eons and greater fawning realizations. If it was given perchance a look that it does actually have like saphire light that is without blueish asks, lesser boughs keel and balk and besties look for the lowest mark, and coax when next the wicked wind, that throws this fruit from timid limbs and unfurls that one waxing pearl, the low hanging fruit artfully yearns.
Momentarily struck
Forevermore stamped
Of whose appearance, lights up
A fabled image.
Eye and heart, both, in each
Unhoped for beauty!
Ghost moth, twilight's. Pale fay, night's.
And a girl of age!
It may be, sweet Susan, that
beyond some touchless horizon
and beneath some fabled sky —
it may be, I say, in some land,
distant and fairytale serene,
that such goldness as I have touched
and such sweetness as I have tasted —
it may be that such beauty
as has stopped my heart
and arrested my eyes, once
lived and walked the grateful earth,
but it cannot be — and none can say —
that, among the nymphs and goddesses,
such glances and beatitudes
as you so casually bestow
on me, your unworthy lover,
have ever been
in one face
gathered.
Christopher M. Swan, "Song of Susan," 2008
Fabled stories about love surround us
Every retailer makes sugared money
Bonds of love remembered
Roses blooming in bouquets
Units of chocolate candy are sold
All hearts are red or pink
Ribbons of red wrapped around hearts
Youthful innocence covered in lace
Though I lament the death of former youth,
a time of naive innocence and sweet bliss,
which hid from me life's dark, unpleasant truth,
and withheld forbidden pleasures that I miss;
a time of brawny beauty and strong thews,
as of Greek gods of Olympian prime,
like Hercules of fabled strength, sinews,
and might of once renown from mythic time.
But mighty Zeus, how I desire most for
the renewing of my now loveless life,
which longs for the fair maidens of folklore,
whose tenderness only can quench loss's strife!
Because of my decline's increasing years,
I lose young love as life's twilight appears.
When the mind faltered
Alternate timelines were born
Lines of realities blurred
Rifts of possibilities torn
Truth fading into the abyss
Chained to the unknown
Silently waiting for life's kiss
To shatter this stone cold throne
Provoking thy swarming thoughts
Clawing and scratching for the one
Blinded by hopes deemed naught
Until one's dreams are none
Walls shaking and quaking
Slashing and ripping
Sharpening newfound wings
Clutches of chaos beating
Sealing thy soul out of light
A chrysalis to preserve us
Away with our own blights
Evolving and growing, thus
Cage of ice and fire crumbled
Exile the grasping darkness, fabled
Every revolution ever
Devised by the most clever
From the rot, they sever
And souls naive
Of anew, believe
Assuming it not too far gone
To rectify all that’s wrong
They must be ready to stand up, then
For combat in the villain’s den
And although it is not as mighty
The sword decides who holds the pen
Yet history provides a warning
And the idealist may end up mourning
For those without a Machiavellian trait
Are warriors destined for a tragic fate
As it seems that thoroughly good men
Will never be esteemed as great
Those who gain control may revise the theme
Drifting ever further from the dream
Men of puerile mind
To knives are blind
And that vision once so fabled
Destroyed by some, we many enabled
On reflection, it makes the morose sigh
When they hear that brave man’s cry
“We serve neither King nor Kaiser”
Acting as a battle galvaniser
Due to the fact that ‘ad finem’
There’s superficial change achieved since then
And all of us are none the wiser
1. To Fly
My father was an admiral, and so
I joined the Navy. Back in fifty-eight
to be a pilot seemed the way to go:
ship-sailors were committed to a crate.
Scrub decks? Paint rusting gunwales? That’s a ‘no’.
The Skyhawk was my weapon (and my fate!)
2. Rubicon Crossing
Some nations follow rainbows, I am told:
we thought, in Vietnam, ‘search and destroy’
would lead us to our fabled pot of gold.
For years we tried it, but it brought no joy:
we lost our nerve, and switched to ‘clear and hold’.
Saigon endured the selfsame end as Troy.
3. Brainwash
The Hanoi Hilton. Yes, I was a guest.
They found my father was a VIP,
and left off hurting me. Impressed,
they wanted to restore my liberty.
But if I left my buddies, I’d detest
myself. I turned them down. That’s decency!
4. Frozen Side of the Sun
Should politicians simply sing the song?
A woman voter told me, in the hall,
Obama was a Muslim. I said, “Wrong!”
I guess I lost her vote. I made the call
I knew was the correct one. I was strong.
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.
The lyrical quartet hearts of Liverpool pulsated,
turning the mundane drab shades into tuneful light
with the mesmeric melodies that enticingly resonated
with iconic songs “Love me do”, “Let it be” of delight,
that became a legacy of the musical golden age,
suffused many souls with synchronized joy and sorrow,
as The Beatles rocked and rolled on the world stage
with wonderful attraction of magnetic musical show,
where guitar strings echoed within the songs soaring free
on the rhapsodic wings of peace, hope and love galore,
beyond their time into the domain of sonic eternity,
where their fabled music lives adored forevermore.
Augury – 2-20-25 Edward Ibeh – Sponsor; Title Chosen - Augury; Pick a Title No. 49
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Augury
Embers of prophecy rise
In the haunting omens of owls
Divining tea leaves
Heralds speak future through opaque signs
And signals of frantic dogs
Before earth heaves in shock of slip strikes
Or the coming of rainbows
Born from sun and blackness.
Gossamer angels bend over vanishing logic,
Brooding envoys of dark horses
In clouds of fireflies or heresies,
Burned at the stake of mineral, mist or ice.
Messenger, from the mystical, utters the unseen,
The face of mute words, allegories in shrouds
Calling to fabled grails, emerge from mystery.
Heraldic voice stands outside algorithms
Wears a clear cloak named vision or terror
A visage drifting through past or dawn
In images without bones,
Unshakable the slow creeping spice
Built on shape shifting tides
Like mist from cloud castles
Before seeking birth in the hands
Of reality’s fiction.
When last the Angels come to take me home
I'll pause in sheltered memories I leave
and peacefully my mind will surely roam
within the quiet calm that they conceive.
Your lair and guarded threshold beckoned me,
though hidden well behind tradition's door
and wrapped within your Mother's wistful pleas,
still, couldn't hide the heart I so adored.
Much like the fabled Montague of old,
I dared the very doorstep where you slept
- in kindred sharing laughed with truths you told
and gently swept the happy tears you wept.
The twilight glows upon what love begets;
forever you remain my Capulet ...
I almost understand, but
but I do not comprehend
nor accept...
That your frozen blood,
fused in silent time,
with pupils painted
with ink of nonsense,
touched with the illusory dust
of an evident negativity,
can rave and enjoy
while watching the noiseless suicide
of my soul that survives
in the midst of a supernatural love
for your fabled figure...
Does nothing bring you
light memories lived,
atavistic happiness, dormant...!
Why do you need so much,
to bite my light that
shines night and day for you,
that bursts for your love,
since the beginning...!
Life’s Repetition of rinse and repeat:
Saga, the odyssey
lies
And deceit.
Juliet’s drowning upon daggers blade in
Response to a Romeo’s lethal swallow.
The need be not the chasing down of serpentine sleuthing out the whys they bit you..
But the how so to heal oneself from poisons onset.
Cause the effect.
Effect the cause.
Alterations of souls allegiances.
Whom wages the war upon one’s self
Loses all in either outcome.
Close the gate,
Button down the hatches
Night draws near.
Light the lamps for shadows creep.
Let illumination run deep..
Burn out yesterday’s fabled ways.
Upon pages of white begin anew.
“Lord what fools these mortals be”
This said by Shakespeare and not by me.
Instead mirror thought of phrase as “idiocracy pains the existence of man”.
Overcome..undone
Underwhelmed..overburdened.
Buried in minds sea
Drowning in muddy thoughts.
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