Note

These earlier poems were written by a self-proclaimed atheist. The present author doubts very much that the aforementioned atheist was truly an atheist, being that the present author knows that deep, deep [read: flushed throughout and clamoring] in the atheist's heart, the still small voice was always speaking.

Lord Leisure

Lord Leisure lounged
Somewhere on the grounds
With an empty pen and tablet,
Waiting for a sign,

From the heavens, among the clouds.
He waited patiently
While the girls served tea, well-mannered,
In the sunlit parlor.

He sought in the cries of birds
The sweet songs of luxury
He was wont to wind about him
Like delicate fine linen,

And he felt the feathery cloth
That warmed the laps of maidens
Lazily spilling time
From the palms of laundered hands.

In cool, decorous rooms
Where gathered, like white moths,
Elysian damsels in fragrant distress,
And uttered violins,

He heard the rain of apparel,
Of seamless silk garments,
And beheld the pale spread of thighs
In depths of crushed velvet.

Lord Leisure entertained
No whimsical delusion,
For surely this was
His kingdom,

And he lorded at his will
The music and the wine
And the elegant superfluities
That time and the means afforded.

Still, here was the naked face
That demanded attention:
A bald plate at his knees
Desiring to be laden.

Jack i

Regard him for his tenacity
And do not say he is this or that kind of a man,
And do not say he does not deserve his dinner,
His car, or Jane's obedience,
His meek but affectionate pooch
Who licks his hand when he comes home...
For this is the thing that Jack dreams:

Elysian grass and champagne, eyes of office girls,
A son who will make it in the world
And raise up his house strong into the next millenium.
He is Joseph, he will spawn a nation.

O it will take us years to forget Jack,
For he lives in every one of us
And we dream his dreams nightly turning the other cheek,
Shifting the weight of our bodies heavy with half-sleep;
The gorgeous panorama of his house and pool and patio
Stretches before the eyes of your Fancy and mine
In the darkness, when we are most alone:
When poetry echoes until it becomes a wild uproar
And not a pleasing music;

O this is the time we love the Jack in us.

A Reprimand

O sentimental, anemic,
writers of bad poems
in a bad time.
we will pay dearly
for the wrong:
for our foul tunes.

Down in Elysium dwell
poets gone lang syne;
but we shall not show our
bald faces there,
our bald souls.
We are attracted to errors
like flies to excrement:
like old women to yarn.
We spin mere dross that no voice
will repeat.

Like children to pleasure,
like profligates to sin.
We eat our nonchalance.
Too easy on the John
we issue it over and over
and over again.

First Shaman's Song

O wind do not pass over me
There is no reason you should pass over me
but rather take me with you
for I long to run hot and wild in the night stars,

O wind do not pass by me.
There is no reason you should pass by me.
but rather take me with you
for I long to bring tumult to the blue waters.

Second Shaman's Song

O moon do not betray me
I pray you do not betray me
For I long to lie hidden
in the black skirts of the cool darkness

O moon do not discover me
I pray you, moon, do not discover me
For the eye of the wild pig
and the tail of the scorpion yearn like hearts on fire

O dawn do not come suddenly
I pray you do not come suddenly
For wrapped in shadows I sit
becalmed and free of the storms of light

O dawn, come with slow steps
with the careful steps of a dancer
(softly) from the east like a girl
in crimson come and lay your delicate kiss to my lips

for only then shall I rise
then, with the dew of your lips
on my brow shall I stand and fend
the onslaught of morning

Sub Urbia

Children race down roads in Suburbia
Hammering little feet on their rubber pedals
Women wearing cotton summer dresses
Bending into heaped laundry-baskets
Sensual lips clasping plastic pins

Men away in the cities, at lonely consoles
In boardroom melancholy, suited and cologned

Boys catch toads by edges of forests
Freckled faces alight, alive w/ young life
Rampant among mushrooms, mouldy timber
Quick feet ransack the thick earth.