Long Asphodel Poems

Opa John

The caboose sits red—its iron spine cradles the earth like Atlas
rails stretching into nowhere. The stream murmurs softly
its voice threading through Ellie’s laughter like silver wire

"Do you see it?" I ask her my voice...

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Mayst tell them, though they leave a sacred land,
Where every inch with rich conception spanned,
With diligence, in Hades mayst they find
A path that to Elysian Fields doth wind.

So many burdens, all the Earth now mars;
So...

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Written: February 14, 2025 for Contest by Edward Ibeh

“Quote: Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
Edgar Allan Poe”

             ...

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For a Woman’s Love 

When you chose to walk away from me, 
swaying those seductive hips, 
hand in hand with my ‘trusted ally’, 
you took with you something 
more precious than pleasure. 

When you chose...

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What is this fell beast, whose image swarms within my head?
An interloper, psychopomp, who gazes with the dead?
Swarming visions of the dark, Shades advance through Asphodel,
Silently shambling with minds dulled, no more secrets left to...

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 The Riders of the Grey Smoke
In a dark dream

Lost in the Midnight Garden
I looked for you

Within its semi-darkness

I walked through the softly blowing winds 
Of The Lands of the Ether and Blue

And called out...

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For you, who must remain in Asphodel,
We weep for you, who have forever fell.

Yet we, who lost the moment, gained all time.
In falling, do we hope that others climb.
And though we lost our little lot...

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Death is at your doorway, the reaper nears, cloaked in darkness,

His essence veiled. He knows your time is close at hand.

How now shall you meet Azrael? He is transported across the mortimer,

The sea of the...

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The light that loses, the night that wins
And time remembered is grief forgotten
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
and in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins
Algernon Charles Swinburne 

Spring Light

Depths of darkness,...

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Spark, sail into flame. Never again.
Melt into miracle, common stuff of roads.
Light, transcending is sorrow.
Cold, seize my heart. Love, consume.
Once, dream, talk in waves of sound.
Stars of the harpsichord, fade me away.
Body, become darkness. All...

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Persephone, as sorrow and as grief,
The world and all its tales are told in brief.
The mirth of all the ages comes to this:
A sunlit sorrow and a broken bliss.
The laws of sorrow rule the lives...

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I can’t get the moors
out of my skin -
me the wild bog asphodel
now planted 
in a pot in tame Ohio.

The moors grind you
into peat and gritstone,
they keep walking you around
while the open spaces sweep you...

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Listen to this grief I tell,
How love away from me didst wind.
And though in time, I think she’ll find
I loved her better – never mind –
The whole of life, its parts combined,
Are only sorrows intertwined....

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With clouds dispersing above Loch Ba,
to where would we go? And just how far?
We followed the track for more than two hours
listening to birds enjoying the flowers:
meadow pippit, willow warbler 
curlew, lapwing and skylarks,
bog asphodel...

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Thou, goddess of the hearth, beloved of all,
My heart may hear, yet never heed thy call.
For I, who love Apollo, wise and warm,
Form shattered, died from savage, sea-swept storm.
And I shall never enter Asphodel
Until the...

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