Altarwise by Owl-Light
Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrows scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentlemen of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world's gentlemen, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.
Death is all metaphors, shape in one history;
The child that sucketh long is shooting up,
The planet-ducted pelican of circles
Weans on an artery the genders strip;
Child of the short spark in a shapeless country
Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle;
The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon,
You by the cavern over the black stairs,
Rung bone and blade, the verticals of Adam,
And, manned by midnight, Jacob to the stars.
Hairs of your head, then said the hollow agent,
Are but the roots of nettles and feathers
Over the groundowrks thrusting through a pavement
And hemlock-headed in the wood of weathers.
First there was the lamb on knocking knees
And three dead seasons on a climbing grave
That Adam's wether in the flock of horns,
Butt of the tree-tailed worm that mounted Eve,
Horned down with skullfoot and the skull of toes
On thunderous pavements in the garden of time;
Rip of the vaults, I took my marrow-ladle
Out of the wrinkled undertaker's van,
And, Rip Van Winkle from a timeless cradle,
Dipped me breast-deep in the descending bone;
The black ram, shuffling of the year, old winter,
Alone alive among his mutton fold,
We rung our weathering changes on the ladder,
Said the antipodes, and twice spring chimed.
What is the metre of the dictionary?
The size of genesis? the short spark's gender?
Shade without shape? the shape of the Pharaohs echo?
(My shape of age nagging the wounded whisper.)
Which sixth of wind blew out the burning gentry?
(Questions are hunchbacks to the poker marrow.)
What of a bamboo man amomg your acres?
Corset the boneyards for a crooked boy?
Button your bodice on a hump of splinters,
My camel's eyes will needle through the shroud.
Loves reflection of the mushroom features,
Still snapped by night in the bread-sided field,
Once close-up smiling in the wall of pictures,
Arc-lamped thrown back upon the cutting flood.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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The Shape of the Wind...
The arctic blasts turn men into plaster casts,
They take the shape of the wind.
The ragged sails lashed by the gales,
Are full of the the shape of the wind.
The shrewd and wise, with half closed eyes,
Can guess the way of the wind.
They bend and bow, and go with the flow,
They take the shape of the wind.
The evening fires make crooked spires,
As they give way to the shape of the wind.
My ice cold breath meets it’s sudden death,
As it takes the shape of the wind.
And all our life, with all it’s strife,
Is nought but the shape of the wind.
So no longer resist, just desist,
And accept the shape of the wind.
poem by John Coldwell

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Ceremony After A Fire Raid
I
Myselves
The grievers
Grieve
Among the street burned to tireless death
A child of a few hours
With its kneading mouth
Charred on the black breast of the grave
The mother dug, and its arms full of fires.
Begin
With singing
Sing
Darkness kindled back into beginning
When the caught tongue nodded blind,
A star was broken
Into the centuries of the child
Myselves grieve now, and miracles cannot atone.
Forgive
Us forgive
Us your death that myselves the believers
May hold it in a great flood
Till the blood shall spurt,
And the dust shall sing like a bird
As the grains blow, as your death grows, through our heart.
Crying
Your dying
Cry,
Child beyond cockcrow, by the fire-dwarfed
Street we chant the flying sea
In the body bereft.
Love is the last light spoken. Oh
Seed of sons in the loin of the black husk left.
II
I know not whether
Adam or Eve, the adorned holy bullock
Or the white ewe lamb
Or the chosen virgin
Laid in her snow
On the altar of London,
Was the first to die
In the cinder of the little skull,
O bride and bride groom
O Adam and Eve together
Lying in the lull
Under the sad breast of the head stone
White as the skeleton
Of the garden of Eden.
I know the legend
Of Adam and Eve is never for a second
Silent in my service
Over the dead infants
Over the one
Child who was priest and servants,
Word, singers, and tongue
In the cinder of the little skull,
Who was the serpent's
Night fall and the fruit like a sun,
Man and woman undone,
Beginning crumbled back to darkness
Bare as nurseries
Of the garden of wilderness.
III
Into the organpipes and steeples
Of the luminous cathedrals,
Into the weathercocks' molten mouths
Rippling in twelve-winded circles,
Into the dead clock burning the hour
Over the urn of sabbaths
Over the whirling ditch of daybreak
Over the sun's hovel and the slum of fire
And the golden pavements laid in requiems,
Into the bread in a wheatfield of flames,
Into the wine burning like brandy,
The masses of the sea
The masses of the sea under
The masses of the infant-bearing sea
Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever
Glory glory glory
The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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Foster the Light
Foster the light nor veil the manshaped moon,
Nor weather winds that blow not down the bone,
But strip the twelve-winded marrow from his circle;
Master the night nor serve the snowman's brain
That shapes each bushy item of the air
Into a polestar pointed on an icicle.
Murmur of spring nor crush the cockerel's eggs,
Nor hammer back a season in the figs,
But graft these four-fruited ridings on your country;
Farmer in time of frost the burning leagues,
By red-eyed orchards sow the seeds of snow,
In your young years the vegetable century.
And father all nor fail the fly-lord's acre,
Nor sprout on owl-seed like a goblin-sucker,
But rail with your wizard's ribs the heart-shaped planet;
Of mortal voices to the ninnies' choir,
High lord esquire, speak up the singing cloud,
And pluck a mandrake music from the marrowroot.
Roll unmanly over this turning tuft,
O ring of seas, nor sorrow as I shift
From all my mortal lovers with a starboard smile;
Nor when my love lies in the cross-boned drift
Naked among the bow-and-arrow birds
Shall you turn cockwise on a tufted axle.
Who gave these seas their colour in a shape,
Shaped my clayfellow, and the heaven's ark
In time at flood filled with his coloured doubles;
O who is glory in the shapeless maps,
Now make the world of me as I have made
A merry manshape of your walking circle.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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Shape Me Like A Man
Spark my body into existence
Breath your life into me
Fill these eyes with temptation
Work your mystery
Make me in the image you desire
Raise me up from the earth
Let me be your creation
Women, give me birth
Take me in your hands
And shape me like a man
Shape me like a man
Put this broken body in motion
With a strong and natural drive
Fill my flesh with sensation
Women let me know Im alive
Take me in your hands
And shape me like a man
Shape me like a man
Like a man
Shape me like a man
Like a man
Shape me like a man
Like a man
Take me in your hands
And shape me like a man
Like a man
Shape me like a man
Like a man
Like a man
Shape me like a man
Like a man
Shape me like a man
Make me like a man
song performed by by Gino Vanelli

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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So Long Suicide
Now goodbye baby its time to break
Habits that youve faced
Sweet sorrow while the cherished dead
Oh in my mouth, every breath I take
Although I need you I dont want to bleed for you
So long suicide
Gone right outta sight outta mind
Leave me alone and abandoned
Hello, Im alive
Im lone and alive and I know
In my bones I know what Im good for
Hello Im alive
Im lone and alive
Yes I know, in my bones
I know what Im doing
I stole the beauty and taste the hurt
Theres always time for pretty flowers
Growing in the dirt
But time is your needle into my heart
And I must be hollow
Cause I cant follow there
(chorus)
Hello, Im alive
Im lone and alive and alone
In my bones I know what Im good for
Hello Im alive
Im lone and alive
Yes I know, in my bones
I know what Im doing
Im scared of being all unknowing
But I swear to live like anyone
And you know its hard to make it
But a light goes on.
And after all the crash and swell
We are just human
And after all is said and done
Were only human
Youre out of sight and out of mind
Im saying so long suicide
The half dream shape of yesterday
In bloom tomorrow
song performed by by Duran Duran

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Shadow
Shape of everything, made of black reflection.
Contrasted from the yellow sun on the bricks' wall.
Body without face, passage without a view.
Figure that you cannot interview.
Shadow, snitcher of light
Hide, from fences of eyes,
For reaper strong and weird.
From the tree blow by the wind,
The leafs fly, attached to the pavements' sky.
Mixing around, invisible outline.
Of a cone pointed shape of irregular shade.
And the smoke held by the tree hock.
Heat the warm floor, of spots & shoots.
Intoxicating the shadow, like through harrow.
Fading away on the windy shallow.
poem by Luca Menin

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A Grief Ago
A grief ago,
She who was who I hold, the fats and the flower,
Or, water-lammed, from the scythe-sided thorn,
Hell wind and sea,
A stem cementing, wrestled up the tower,
Rose maid and male,
Or, master venus, through the paddler's bowl
Sailed up the sun;
Who is my grief,
A chrysalis unwrinkling on the iron,
Wrenched by my fingerman, the leaden bud
Shot through the leaf,
Was who was folded on the rod the aaron
Road east to plague,
The horn and ball of water on the frog
Housed in the side.
And she who lies,
Like exodus a chapter from the garden,
Brand of the lily's anger on her ring,
Tugged through the days
Her ropes of heritage, the wars of pardon,
On field and sand
The twelve triangles of the cherub wind
Engraving going.
Who then is she,
She holding me? The people's sea drives on her,
Drives out the father from the caesared camp;
The dens of shape
Shape all her whelps with the long voice of water,
That she I have,
The country-handed grave boxed into love,
Rise before dark.
The night is near,
A nitric shape that leaps her, time and acid;
I tell her this: before the suncock cast
Her bone to fire,
Let her inhale her dead, through seed and solid
Draw in their seas,
So cross her hand with their grave gipsy eyes,
And close her fist.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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Call Me Up (The Phone Is In The Cradle)
My friends, they don't talk much about religion
But my friends, they don't talk much anyway-ay
When they do I know I'd better listen
'Cause my good friends just naturally know
The right things to say
They say, call me up, the phone is in the cradle
Get yourself delivered to my door-oor
Well if you're so inclined and if you've got the time
We can talk the night away
Adam got so lonely in the garden
He said it's tough to be the only man alive
He said I'd give a rib for just somebody to talk to
Well thunder and lightnin' out providin'
You came strollin' by
She said, call me up, the phone is in the cradle
Get yourself delivered to my doo-oor
Well if you're so inclined and if you've got the time
We can talk the night away
Now Rosie was the queen of the all night cowboy
She said, Texas boy, you seem kinda shy-y
Don't you expect an embossed invitation
Just knock on the wall, come down the hall
And knock on by
She said, call me up, the phone is in the cradle
Get yourself delivered to my doo-oor
Call me up, the phone is in the cradle
Get yourself delivered to my doo-oor
Call me up, the phone is in the cradle
Get yourself delivered to my doo-oor
Call me up, the phone is in the cradle
Get yourself [fade]
song performed by by Kenny Rogers

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Crow On The Cradle
(from the soundtrack to no nukes; peformed live by jackson browne with graham nash & david lindley)
The sheeps in the meadow
The cows in the corn
Now is the time for a child to be born
Hell laugh at the moon
And cry for the sun
And if its a boy hell carry a gun
Sang the crow on the cradle
And if it should be that this babys a girl
Never you mind if her hair doesnt curl
With rings on her fingers
And bells on her toes
And a bomber above her wherever she goes
Sang the crow on the cradle
The crow on the cradle
The black and the white
Somebodys baby is born for a fight
The crow on the cradle
The white and the black
Somebodys baby is not coming back
Sang the crow on the cradle
Your mother and father will sweat and theyll slave
To build you a coffin and dig you a grave
Hush-a-bye little one, never you weep
For weve got a toy that can put you to sleep
Sang the crow on the cradle
Bring me my gun, and Ill shoot that bird dead
Thats what your mother and father once said
The crow on the cradle, what can we do
Ah, this is a thing that Ill leave up to you
Sang the crow on the cradle
Sang the crow on the cradle
song performed by by Jackson Browne

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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When Once the Twilight Locks No Longer
When once the twilight locks no longer
Locked in the long worm of my finger
Nor damned the sea that sped about my fist,
The mouth of time sucked, like a sponge,
The milky acid on each hinge,
And swallowed dry the waters of the breast.
When the galactic sea was sucked
And all the dry seabed unlocked,
I sent my creature scouting on the globe,
That globe itself of hair and bone
That, sewn to me by nerve and brain,
Had stringed my flask of matter to his rib.
My fuses are timed to charge his heart,
He blew like powder to the light
And held a little sabbath with the sun,
But when the stars, assuming shape,
Drew in his eyes the straws of sleep
He drowned his father's magics in a dream.
All issue armoured, of the grave,
The redhaired cancer still alive,
The cataracted eyes that filmed their cloth;
Some dead undid their bushy jaws,
And bags of blood let out their flies;
He had by heart the Christ-cross-row of death.
Sleep navigates the tides of time;
The dry Sargasso of the tomb
Gives up its dead to such a working sea;
And sleep rolls mute above the beds
Where fishes' food is fed the shades
Who periscope through flowers to the sky.
When once the twilight screws were turned,
And mother milk was stiff as sand,
I sent my own ambassador to light;
By trick or chance he fell asleep
And conjured up a carcass shape
To rob me of my fluids in his heart.
Awake, my sleeper, to the sun,
A worker in the morning town,
And leave the poppied pickthank where he lies;
The fences of the light are down,
All but the briskest riders thrown
And worlds hang on the trees.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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My World Is Pyramid
I
Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
To-morrow's diver in her horny milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.
The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled
Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop,
The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled
The swing of milk was tufted in the pap,
For half of love was planted in the lost,
And the unplanted ghost.
The broken halves are fellowed in a cripple,
The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep,
Limp in the street of sea, among the rabble
Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep,
And stake the sleepers in the savage grave
That the vampire laugh.
The patchwork halves were cloven as they scudded
The wild pigs' wood, and slime upon the trees,
Sucking the dark, kissed on the cyanide,
And loosed the braiding adders from their hairs,
Rotating halves are horning as they drill
The arterial angel.
What colour is glory? death's feather? tremble
The halves that pierce the pin's point in the air,
And prick the thumb-stained heaven through the thimble.
The ghost is dumb that stammered in the straw,
The ghost that hatched his havoc as he flew
Blinds their cloud-tracking eye.
II
My world is pyramid. The padded mummer
Weeps on the desert ochre and the salt
Incising summer.
My Egypt's armour buckling in its sheet,
I scrape through resin to a starry bone
And a blood parhelion.
My world is cypress, and an English valley.
I piece my flesh that rattled on the yards
Red in an Austrian volley.
I hear, through dead men's drums, the riddled lads,
Screwing their bowels from a hill of bones,
Cry Eloi to the guns.
My grave is watered by the crossing Jordan.
The Arctic scut, and basin of the South,
Drip on my dead house garden.
Who seek me landward, marking in my mouth
The straws of Asia, lose me as I turn
Through the Atlantic corn.
The fellow halves that, cloven as they swivel
On casting tides, are tangled in the shells,
Bearding the unborn devil,
Bleed from my burning fork and smell my heels.
The tongue's of heaven gossip as I glide
Binding my angel's hood.
Who blows death's feather? What glory is colour?
I blow the stammel feather in the vein.
The loin is glory in a working pallor.
My clay unsuckled and my salt unborn,
The secret child, I sift about the sea
Dry in the half-tracked thigh.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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Adam In Chains
Do you want to be hypnotized
All you have to do is move your body
In what ever way feels comfortable for you
Just let yourself sink into the groove
And move
Fix your eyes on a spot
It doesnt matter where
Just fix your eyes on on espot
And begin to relax
Feel your mind and body
Beginning to wind down
Wind down, wind down and relax
If you have any thoughts
Just let them drift through your mind
Like beautiful clouds
Across a clear blue sky
Just through your mind and away from you
Through your mind and away
As you relax
Deeper, deeper and deeper relax
Just let go of stress and tension
Let go of worry and doubt and relax
Imagine a staircase standing in front of you
With ten, wide, safe, stairs
Down, down to a perfect relaxation
Down to peace and contentment
Down towards the happiness that you deserve
And as I count down from ten
Take one step with each number
One step down
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Deeper, deeper, deeper relax
Thats it just let go and relax
Youve stolen my heart its true
You see the shape of things to come
Why give up our lives to the brutes and fools
Tear it all apart
You see the shape of things to come
Why? this now girl
Will we kill each other
Like adam in chains
I want revenge
Like adam in chains
I want revenge
Adam in chains
Theyve broken your heart
Ah yeah, theyre gonna tear your world apart
Why make up a lie
And believe its true
Ah, tear it all apart
I know the shape of things to come
Why this now girl
Will we murder each other
Like adam in chains
I want revenge
Like adam in chains
I want revenge
Like adam in chains
I want revenge
Want revenge
In the mind of a madman
There are colour explosions
An eclipse of emotion
Why tear our world apart
Why tear it all apart
Why tear our world apart girl
song performed by by Billy Idol

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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When, Like a Running Grave
When, like a running grave, time tracks you down,
Your calm and cuddled is a scythe of hairs,
Love in her gear is slowly through the house,
Up naked stairs, a turtle in a hearse,
Hauled to the dome,
Comes, like a scissors stalking, tailor age,
Deliver me who timid in my tribe,
Of love am barer than Cadaver's trap
Robbed of the foxy tongue, his footed tape
Of the bone inch
Deliver me, my masters, head and heart,
Heart of Cadaver's candle waxes thin,
When blood, spade-handed, and the logic time
Drive children up like bruises to the thumb,
From maid and head,
For, sunday faced, with dusters in my glove,
Chaste and the chaser, man with the cockshut eye,
I, that time's jacket or the coat of ice
May fail to fasten with a virgin o
In the straight grave,
Stride through Cadaver's country in my force,
My pickbrain masters morsing on the stone
Despair of blood faith in the maiden's slime,
Halt among eunuchs, and the nitric stain
On fork and face.
Time is a foolish fancy, time and fool.
No, no, you lover skull, descending hammer
Descends, my masters, on the entered honour.
You hero skull, Cadaver in the hangar
Tells the stick, 'fail.'
Joy is no knocking nation, sir and madam,
The cancer's fashion, or the summer feather
Lit on the cuddled tree, the cross of fever,
Not city tar and subway bored to foster
Man through macadam.
I dump the waxlights in your tower dome.
Joy is the knock of dust, Cadaver's shoot
Of bud of Adam through his boxy shift,
Love's twilit nation and the skull of state,
Sir, is your doom.
Everything ends, the tower ending and,
(Have with the house of wind), the leaning scene,
Ball of the foot depending from the sun,
(Give, summer, over), the cemented skin,
The actions' end.
All, men my madmen, the unwholesome wind
With whistler's cough contages, time on track
Shapes in a cinder death; love for his trick,
Happy Cadaver's hunger as you take
The kissproof world.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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An Only Begotten Son
Joseph and Mary
your son Isaiah 9: 6-7
is only first born Matthew 1: 16
without original sin
human stain
of Adam and Eve Genesis 3: 1-18
only child
born without
original sin Matthew 20: 28
an immaculate Matthew 1: 18
conception Matthew 1: 23
awaited virgin birth Matthew 1: 25
third perfect
human being
second Adam Hebrews 7: 28
only perfect soul
tempted by sin
that did not fall Mark 1: 13
God incarnate
in flesh
our long promised John 1: 14
Messiah born John 1: 41-42
into the world
in Bethlehem Matthew 2: 1
Adam made by
God’s own hands
shaped in red clay
God breathed breath
of life into Adam
spark of life living soul Genesis 2: 7
Eve rib taken
from Adam in sleep
flesh of his flesh
soul of his soul
God created first man
God created first woman Genesis 2: 20-23
in the beginning
was the Word
the Word was with God John 1: 1
the Word was a God
all things came into
existence through him
apart from him
not even one thing
came into existence John 1: 1-3
Lord Jesus Christ John 20; 28
Our Lord and Saviour Acts 13: 23
The Blood of the Lamb John 1: 29
For God
loved the world
so much
that he sent
his only
begotten son John 3: 16
as a ransom
sacrifice for our sin 1Timothy 2: 6
to save the world John 3: 17
so that all people
exercising faith in him
would not be judged John 3: 18
but be saved
given eternal life
for there is one God
and one mediator
between God and men
a man Christ Jesus 1Timothy 2: 5
who said
I am the way
the truth
and the life
and no one
comes to God
except through me John 14: 6
poem by Terence George Craddock

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Poetics
I look for the way
things will turn
out spiralling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:
not the shape on paper -- though
that, too -- but the
uninterfering means on paper:
not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.
poem by Archie Randolph Ammons

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On a windy night (in answer to T.S. Eliot)
I. It’s Midnight
It’s Midnight
and the wind brushes softly though my hair,
there are long drawn out shadows everywhere
under the street lamps and the bright light
is stringed out in white
beacon after beacon leading for some to somewhere
but to me it feels as if they are going nowhere,
as if this dark night
is endless without form or shape
and one lonely shadow is following me
while branches are caught in a macabre dance
and there’s a chill at the nape
of my neck and darkness wherever I see
while I walk as if in a trance.
II. Half past one
Half past one
and the spluttering street lump did mutter
“so you had your fun, ”
and no single word did I utter
and at my back fear was crawling
as if in the past night
I had done a unpardonable sin and wind was the singing
“do not look back” and above me the stars was bright
but a strange feeling was in me
as if something evil was following,
as if from it I would never be free
and I glimpsed back, in my daring caught a glance
of something without shadow sneaking behind
and I believed that it as a trick of the mind.
III. It was half-past two
It was half-past two
and while walking through the park
I did not have a clue
where I was going and the night was very dark
and a black thinned out cat sneaked past
with green glowing eyes
as if the tranquillity could not last
and all of the past goodbyes
where coming to my mind
of loved animals, friends and you
as if I was blind and never again to find
the place in the world where I belonged to
and with a leap of delight
the cat found something to eat in that night.
IV. The darkness washed over me
The darkness washed over me
falling like a old worn out cloak
and there were known stars that I could see
but with feelings wanted to choke
and it was half-past three
with a strange familiar howl in the wind
and the cat was eying me
as if in me it had find
a close compatriot
who is also a dweller in the night,
but in life I felt like a idiot
watching the bright
lights of cars passing in the distance,
praying for some kind of deliverance.
V. At four I was chilly
At four I was chilly
and did not want to wait in the park anymore,
the cat was still with me
purring much more in love with me than before
and I carried it while stroking it
as if I had found a new friend
and bit by tiny bit
I liked it and it was no fiend
but a tiny living thing
with shiny bright eyes burning
right through me and the wind did sing
the leaves on branches were still churning
and for a time I had company,
and it was great to be alive with something that loved me.
VI. The memory was crowding me
The memory was crowding me,
as if there was no escape
that on a similar night I did see
a glance of beauty peering from beneath a cape
and then it was somewhat chilly
not like now a summer night
and a strange passion did fill me
to see her full face in the bright light
but into the night she did disappear
with white cheeks and the fire of a eye
as if she was not meant to be near
and now with the sun in a bright sky
with a bird calling on its mate
I see her standing at the garden gate.
[Reference: Rhapsody on a Windy Night by T. S. Eliot.]
poem by Gert Strydom

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My Child
Let me rock you as if in a cradle.
But let the cradle be my arms.
Let me soothe your furrowed brow
and smile upon your charms.
Let me sing you a lullaby
and watch you fall asleep.
Let me listen to your sleeping sound
and hold you close to me.
Let me never forget this moment
and keep it alive in my memory.
My child, my child you'll grow too fast
and never will there be
a time to rock you in my arms again
or cradle you close to me.
poem by Edwina Reizer

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The Mountain Cemetery
With their harsh leaves old rhododendrons fill
The crevices in grave plots' broken stones.
The bees renew the blossoms they destroy,
While in the burning air the pines rise still,
Commemorating long forgotten biers.
Their roots replace the semblance of these bones.
The weight of cool, of imperceptible dust
That came from nothing and to nothing came
Is light within the earth and on the air.
The change that so renews itself is just.
The enormous, sundry platitude of death
Is for these bones, bees, trees, and leaves the same.
And splayed upon the ground and through the trees
The mountains' shadow fills and cools the air,
Smoothing the shape of headstones to the earth.
The rhododendrons suffer with the bees
Whose struggles loose ripe petals to the earth,
The heaviest burden it shall ever bear.
Our hard earned knowledge fits us for such sleep.
Although the spring must come, it passes too
To form the burden suffered for what comes.
Whatever we would give our souls to keep
Is merely part of what we call the soul;
What we of time would threaten to undo
All time in its slow scrutiny has done.
For on the grass that starts about the feet
The body's shadow turns, to shape in time,
Soon grown preponderant with creeping shade,
The final shadow that is turn of earth;
And what seems won paid for as in defeat.
poem by Edgar Bowers

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Sacred Love
Take off those working clothes
Put on these high heeled shoes
Don't want no preacher on the TV baby
Don't want to hear the news
Shut out the world behind us
Put on your long black dress
No one's ever gonna find us here
Just leave your hair in a mess
I've been searching long enough
I begged the moon and the stars above
For sacred love
I've been up, I've been down
I've been lonesome, in this godless town
You're my religion, you're my church
You're the holy grail at the end of my search
Have I been down on my knees for long enough?
I've been searching the planet to find
Sacred love
The spirit moves on the water
She takes the shape of this heavenly daughter
She's rising up like a river in flood
The word got made into flesh and blood
The sky grew dark, and the earth she shook
Just like a prophecy in the Holy Book
Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not doubt that this love is real
So I got down on my knees and I prayed to the skies
When I looked up could I trust my eyes?
All the saints and angels and the stars up above
They all bowed down to the flower of creation
Every man every woman
Every race every nation
It all comes down to this
Sacred love
Don't need no doctor, don't need no pills
I got a cure for the country's ills
Here she comes like a river in flood
The word got made into flesh and blood
Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill
But if you don't love her your best friend will
All the saints up in heaven and the stars up above
It all comes down, it all comes down
It all comes down to love,
Take off your working clothes
Put on your long black dress
song performed by by Sting

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Last Revelation (The Final Prophecy)
There were none at His left hand
No man amongst His army
The Earth has ripped herself open
And birthed from her wounds
Thick black clouds, which covered the Earth
It tears
I see blood in the air
I taste the blood in the air
Dissected from the heaven
Cut and stripped of her skin
We let it begin
Descending from heaven
It tears
I see blood in the air
I taste the blood in the air
Dissected from the heaven
Cut and stripped of her skin
We let it begin
Descending from heaven
An all-consuming cancer
An all-consuming cancer
An all-consuming cancer
An all-consuming cancer
Reaching to repent
We will taste it in its purest form
Reaching out for nothing
Suffocation on our words
While we hold our children
It tears
I see blood in the air
I taste the blood in the air
Dissected from the heaven
Cut and stripped of her skin
We let it begin
Descending from heaven
It tears
I see blood in the air
I taste the blood in the air
Dissected from the heaven
Cut and stripped of her skin
We let it begin
Descending from heaven
No cradle
No Son
A mother of none
No cradle
No Son
A mother of none
No cradle
No Son
A mother of none
No cradle
No Son
A mother of none
It tears
I see blood in the air
I taste the blood in the air
Dissected from the heaven
Cut and stripped of her skin
We let it begin
Descending from heaven
It tears
I see blood in the air
I taste the blood in the air
Dissected from the heaven
Cut and stripped of her skin
We let it begin
Descending from heaven
song performed by by Zao

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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