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Craig Leaf Poem
WAR OF LILIES AND OF ROSES
Lilies white, blushing with red roses sweet
A lily-rose fair, unstained, Rome's virtuous Lucrece
Of beauty so strong, even in desire, men doth retreat.
Sextus Tarquinius vile with the lust that men enclose
Defiant, would defile, such a flawless rose
Unable to repose his swelling desire
Enraged by her beauty, to merely admire
Nympholeptic he, to acquire
Lucrece of the rose rubbed cheeks and lily white face
In lust Sextus Tarquinius wist wilt and debase
And force open lily white thighs
deified
he
defiled
she
To wrench such peddles enclosed
Ravaging such a sacred lily, rose
eros
sore
bled
Till white stained red, both thigh and bed
Leaving such a sweet flower torn, alive
So, polluted, no longer chaste, she with dagger neat
Did drive sharp between her bosom's blossom, sweet
Which did anoint red the sheet
Roses spilled; lilies retreat.
Death be sweet and release
Rome's sweet Lucrece
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Copyright © Craig Leaf | Year Posted 2007
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Craig Leaf Poem
Whether we wander wistful
whether we wander wise
we waltz wedding’s waltz; whenever
whatever weather
we’ll wriggle with wishful wives
Wind wispy willow
willy-nilly we’ll whirl
we’ll widdle we’ll weave; whenever
whatever weather
we'll waltz with wedding's wench
Well worthy we writers
who with words wrench
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Copyright © Craig Leaf | Year Posted 2007
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Craig Leaf Poem
you are all a lost generation -- Gertrude Stein ?
I
Once hallowed encephalon
cavernous cerebral chasms
now less serene
ruptured n' spleen
Subjected to ravenous days?
Days n' illumination?
n' summers hibernation?
Awaiting eschatology and Madonna's divination
In summers somnolent slumbers I was told
In dreams of all truths and history's scrolled
and what a fair delication to unfold
truth rings from the shell aft each reeling beak's descent
Forsake of the shell's salty fleshes derivment
A fleshy flower buds on the briar
To pluck and dissect or leave to admire
Death in creation
dreaming awakes, awakenings dream
In our waking weakness lies perfection
But, oh how sweet to dream
Subjected to my piety in blinding ruth
did I in dreaming sin for sooth?
Had Queen Mab or Archimago
twist my thrice twisted dreams
with lies, abashing
and which in violence dance and beam
As waves with phosphorus' glow
they in guise clever crashing: gleam
false sooth, in golden pools of indigo
ever changing yet constant
As waves upon the shore
singing
Sometimes soft and melancholy
Sometimes malice, as to destroy
Death in creation
dreaming awakes, awakenings dream
In our waking weakness lies perfection
But, oh how sweet to dream
II
Oh my visage
how it pales in the light beside...
her
my madonna
my oracle my day
Darkness in its defined fray
and I Amidst a Yeats' Byzantine nightmare
to linger, to consist, to decay, an ill-stared heir
a doxology,
pregnant with heterodoxy.
Paling in comparison, in cavernous fright
days n' days and infinite blight
Static tremors. Intangible vibrations
Winter
Summer
Solstice
Hibernation
To seek what lay beneath
the countenance of the Madonna
the purity
The past I prospectively reap
n' seep
n' sow
The city's concrete catacombs glow
The future in night
day's abrasive
in its own right
reside in the day
confide in night
Rage, rage and endless blight
in dreaming escape day n' days of
a lifetimes endless death, in love
Death in creation
dreaming awakes, awakenings dream
In our waking weakness lies perfection
But, oh how sweet to dream
Copyright © Craig Leaf | Year Posted 2007
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Craig Leaf Poem
You are old I am young
You have love I have none.
"Look. Look at those flocks of birds emigrating south!
They’re escaping with regular wing beats, crying farewell."
Tomorrow would be a good day to die
Today a good tomorrow
Dying must be strange, nonsense life is strange
We wait for nothing yet nothing will come
I never hoped you would accept an invitation to my farewell party
We wait for nothing yet nothing will come
Yes, like Fassbinder
Yes, like Veronica Voss
I owe my soul to the company store
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Craig Leaf Poem
Please read "Untitled" (part 1 & 2 first)
III
Never are the odious so aware
Of their shortcomings as when facing Madonna
so fine and fair
My Madonna...
I sat reflecting while inspecting my Madonna
As she twirled a lilly in her hair
while playfully directing
a meandering blind holy men
in the avenues of America
seeking, Athens
as if expecting
Virility
Fertility
summer twice a year
standing with basket
desperate to catch, a muse's tear
insolent, in eclipsed brilliance
In the elongated, exaggerated
shadow of dead poets' illumination
here I stand as a shadow against truth
Subjected to my piety in blinding ruth
Do stars they gazed on still remain
glistening through the cosmic, extragalactic plains
or does just the light now travel
fleeing some still darker stain
a requiem and universes' past
or 'haps an epithelium...
as we children are told
"that mystic things in time remain"
reflecting on waters still lustrous
Reflecting over all the tributaries of the Mississippi
A generation lost
and I -- lost in hindsight
Rage, rage and endless blight
in dreaming escape day n' days of
a lifetimes endless death, in love
IV
To their reflected desires
of my own as well
Obsessed
Obsessed
to Consume the night
and empty nest
To Madonna's purity and ideological reflection
But how can I convince divinity’s rejection?
Should I wish the atomic explosive asunder –
Universal extraction; Infinite blunder
Once and finally to come across
The cosmic oceanic ebb
Its odious and conduit web
If only to immerse my head
Beneath the transfigured river bed
Deep in Heavens ethereal spring
Where chained like the sea
I in sleeping shall sing
...or dream of singing sweet, to thee
V
Singing here like the burning Arnaut
And Romanticism last fleeting thought
Copyright © Craig Leaf | Year Posted 2007
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Craig Leaf Poem
In November limbs are still
Thin against the dying light
From sylvan vale to hill
Poised in forms for us, contrite
Pergola bare with thorn
The knuckles of the hemlock worn
Expansive loomed leaf arbor's torn
Preparing for winters blight
in hibernation
To discover the divination
of dendrology, their eschatology and escape
Mystic trees as old as hills they nest
Did they raise the earth abreast
and create
Hill and dale, with leaves and root's end-trail
These trees beyond date
and chronology
Ever older, wiser growing,
love, loss and dying things
they who see all and knowing
of all things past that chronos sings
If I could hear, what would they tell?
Of all history's, fair and fell?
And all the tails of old recreate
Dare I impel, and test,
The gods with such haughty inquests
Demanding a divination of truth?
No, never will I know their tale
And happier be, beneath the arbor vale
in summers sweet
or bit by winter's tooth
Seek thou? No!
There is no sooth.
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Copyright © Craig Leaf | Year Posted 2007
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Craig Leaf Poem
Wandering the cobbled roads of Boston’s misty night
The stars spun like dew in spiders’ web glistening with delight
Low I came to a bridge, stone and fair and white
Over Charles’ river dark it reflected pale and bright
Looking off the bridge of stone, at the river ever changing
The starry night, the bridge of white, fragmented, rearranging
As if under Charles' influence, every molecule trembled in its ebb
Which finally shook a sparkling star from night's illusive web
I watched the falling star dive, it dove with fiery might
When a great shadowed beast sprung across the night
It could not escape the Attercop who fed with great delight
She who spins the starry night with four pair spindly legs
And month by month rolls the moon, her hanging sack of eggs
When the moon 'gins to wain her children descend and brightly sing
Filling the night sky anew, with stars, which hang from silky string
And if her children attempt escape, to dart or flash away
She scoops them in ominous jaws, like crocodile's prey
Fear the Great Attercop in night, for dire is her sting
And on wandering children verdant, she is known to spring
Stay my child in your bed, sleep neat until the dawn
For it is the flesh of infancy she feeds her offspring on
Finishing Line Press. Book FAREWELL TO THE DUST, by C. S. Leaf avalible March 2008
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Copyright © Craig Leaf | Year Posted 2006
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Craig Leaf Poem
ULYSSES
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell. 1
Cross legged I await
Heavens beams, to embrace
to bundle to lash with twine
drifting wood
While the waves whip the beache's grace
I hold the smooth forked roots in hand
Roots in time can break stone
and mold it like the water is able
Water that feeds the root
Sun that feeds the fingers
I ask not much old sea
Dashing dead against stones
Barnacles tear at flesh and vessel
low birds impale the shell
to eat salty flesh
Everything and nothing is water
Eternal yet fleeting
Comforting yet cold
Supportive yet unwieldy
Reflective yet transparent
Hungry yet quenchless
Ye oldest mare
whose rising breasts swell
and hungry opens cavernous
to consume both breast and beam
Her victims wash about my feet
Ripen, swell abreast
resign this earth
Death who she knows best
who winged I've seen
who in decay keeps fertile, she
who drinks endless of streams immortal
I await her sea-nymphs call for me
Though I alone shall not quell
her endless thirst,
when half submersed.
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell
Deus pasit corvos*
Tempest 1. 2 (1)
God feeds the ravens*
Finishing Line Press. Book FAREWELL TO THE DUST, by C. S. Leaf avalible March 2008
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Copyright © Craig Leaf | Year Posted 2007
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