October Frost

No snowflakes fell upon the ground
They still engulfed the sky,
And skirt the mountains all around
With onyx-coated dye

That clothed the wisping trails of Mist,
That clung the sleeping grass;
With gentle, threading lines, her fist
Crept to the cottage glass.

She glanced within to see the boy
Asleep by fire’s blaze,
Surrounded with his every toy,
And dreams of summer days.

And then, so jealous, did She deign
A pattern with her hands
That snaked its way along the pane
As firm as marching bands;

So when the boy did rise awake
With wriggling of his toes,
He saw the outdoors as a lake
That, while he slept, had froze

And that the Sun begun to bake
The moment that He rose.

I Long for Misplaced Childhood

I long for misplaced childhood!
When I was just as green
As the green, green earth on which I stood,
My senses just as keen

As the little fox I had chased
Across the shaded glen;
Before my mind was made abased
Under the stare of men.

Before my heart!—my little heart
(My dear! He sailed before)
Played the scoundrel, pirate’s part,
On sea and on the shore.

I yearn for every sunset that
For hours I would watch;
And as I gazed, and as I sat
My soul was void of blotch

That has me stunted well with age,
The yellow carousels
Have molded brown, and the page
Rings no more wedding bells.

And every field of Dragonsnap
I’ve wandered in has gone;
I feel a tree that’s lost its sap,
(And withering is long.)

And all I do is faint recall
The glory of my years,
While reminiscing of it all
My eyes could turn to tears

For all of these are memories
And surely they won’t last;
For all these, but memories—
And memory’s fading fast.

To Destroy Poetry

You can stuff it with images
Articulately honed,
That are nothing but mirages,
A mirror that’s been cloned.

Or Emo’s you’ll collaborate
To write with them of pain,
And in their tears you’ll masturbate
A weeping with the rain.

Or, you can stand on syllable
And measure every beat;
But then the rhyme is irritable
And only bloody feet.

Or, you could choose a mark, or theme,
That at its best is terse;
And use that tense to mark your dream
Of second-scribble verse.

Or, you could be a bland satire
Of all the poets blessed,
And think your worst is all their peer—
To hell with all the rest!

Or, you could tell us how to write
What’s only meant to mean,
Forgetting beauty—though in spite
Of all its blessed to been.

Or, you could limit poetry
To single, stringent form;
Forgetting then that all beauty
Was made before your born.

Yet, more than this, the maul of verse
(Whereby its truly dead)
Is surrender it to the curse
Of the: “Its all been said.”

Astronaut

I saw it in the paper
Pasted on front page Wall Street,
It said that you’re all grown up
And are flying to the moon;
And I can’t help but wonder
If you’ll see me far up there.

Darling, I remember you:
We used to share our classes;
I would beg for detention
Just so I’d sit next to you.
I’d bring buttercups with me
Since you hated cement walls.

I hid you from your Daddy
When he was upset at you;
We fell asleep at my place
On the scratchy, basement couch,
The pounding rain on the glass
Sung us both softly asleep.

But friends part, and life goes on,
Your dreams were always ether;
So, up there, above the world
Is living any better?
How is life inside the stars
That never could contain you?

When you get there tell me if
There is a God, and whether
He’s got the world in his hands;
Kiss Him for the both of us,
And tell Him that I miss you
Much more then He’ll ever know.

Sign our names on every rock
Reaching from the moon to Mars,
Dance naked over Venus
No one there will stare at you.
You know that I would join you
If I only learned to fly.

Sneak behind Orion’s belt,
And snatch it while he’s sleeping—
I’ll be looking every night
To see if I can spot it—
And won’t that be a sight
To confuse the scientists.

And, when in orbit sometime,
Look at the bilberry world
Maybe then you will see me,
I’ll be waving back at you.
Before I drift off to sleep
To meet you among the stars.

The Writers Bewilderment

Evict your spotless tinctures from
My empty, calloused, head,
For all my life I’ve dwelt among
The living and the dead.

All my life has not exceeded
My superfluous verse;
Half my rhymes have superseded
Their ingenuous curse.

A Chilion encased my mind
With chains that held astute,
My inner eye was left for blind
Auspicious voice a-mute;

And beetles crawling on the ground,
Lost in their symphonies;
Were boon companions that I found
To share my infamies.

I crept with them, I learned that chains
Were fastened to the ground
And couldn’t keep my thoughts, in planes,
From wandering around.

And so I soared from seas of night
And floated on the moon,
I met a girl of grand delight
And made her swan to swoon.

I thought of oceans, and of mars,
And drank a sea of ships;
I thought of thoughts that broke my bars
Like round potato chips.

Then, broken free, and hand in hand
We danced unto the end;
And made our home as well on sand
As every river-bend.

We slept in sheets of saffron silk
And ate the golden sun.
To every foot of ink we spilt
One thousand more we’d run.

Yes there, in white, did we alone
Lay down our heads to die;
Our liver, lungs, and grizzled bones
Were said at once to scry.

And in our bile we emerged—
The prophets of our doom—
To lift our pens and ink a splurge
Of writings in the room.

For only then, when one is dead
Does one speak of what needs be said.

Epiphany of the Creative Morgue

Empty out my cauldron mind
And label it: “Infinity”
Spread me like an orange rind—
The herald of precocity.

I’ve drunk bile in my bones
At the grandest of delusions,
And reached alto in the Thrones
To clamber up confusions.

Down the river-barge I gait
To the questioning of Silence,
(A brief affair fall to spate
Volcanic nodes of violence.)

My fetus heart gone flaccid
At this chilling lack—emotions,
Has placed my soul a-placid
With each dizzying of notions.

To douse my head, and wipe my pen;
To write—to think!—of better men.

Befuddlement!—my Muse

Follow me, unwieldy dreams!—
O’er unconscious ink,
Through Flanders Fields, each lined in reams,
To pivot on a brink.

My harp of gold Adonis hair
Has only left me mute;
My thoughts placed out in travels bare,
A scry that’s failed acute.

I’ve watched your holes—yes, pits agape
Were windows to my soul,
That poured upon, in every shape,
A lost, unseemly role.

Yet dry I’ve been in all of this:
The pouring and the draught.
An aimless mind has burned amiss
In every ingle spot.

To ply its trade with pigeonholes
Where ruined children play,
(Deploring practice in the night
Embracement in the day.)

All of our ruined Muse polis
Deluge upon debris
Of shipwrecked minds, in their solace
Were once sought out by me;

To stake a claim upon their earth,
Suspending my creative birth.

Words to Love on Her Apparent Nature

And enchantment in your blisses
Stupors understanding,
While chills from wildernesses
Doles out a second-handing—
Narcotic to indolent minds,
Who care for this crash landing.

This is love!—or so they speak
Of treachery and flame.
Wrapped in gauze, their souls will seek
To do it once again;
Apothegm to all mankind
Of contradiction, plain.