1.
Oh yes, friend! I'm crazy-
that's just the way I am.
2.
I see sounds,
I hear sights,
I taste smells,
I touch not heaven but things from the underworld,
things people do not believe exist,
......
INFANTRY COLUMNS
We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa --
Foot--foot--foot--foot--sloggin' over Africa --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
Seven--six--eleven--five--nine-an'-tw enty mile to-day --
Four--eleven--seventeen--thirty-two the day before --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
......
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
andI mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
......
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
......
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.
The ant is busy
......
In shadows deep where quiet whispers dwell,
The water flows with secrets of the past,
A mirror holds the tales that none can tell,
Yet in its depths, our fragile fates are cast.
As flames arise in fervent, wild embrace,
They devour dreams, turn laughter into ash,
While water cools the heat of lost disgrace,
In turbulent streams, our sorrows clash.
......
Empress Ladybird lived in Moss Wood, in a huge, hollow of an oak tree;
In domestic comfort, with all her dear children, beyond the entry, leafy.
Empress and her mate had parted, when they'd resolved to move on;
However, she would live to love again, like spring when winter's gone.
Empress was all things that a ruler should be, like Queen Anne's lace-
Always fair and kind to subjects, in the green, forest kingdom of grace.
Fireflies and frogs made up the forest family, and visited at olive even,
......
Awaken, you who is kept
buried under mountains of water.
Cast down from empty sky; set alight and
burnt. You chose to drench yourself and
run away from flames chained to you.
But now you sit, singled and desperate,
hoping for nothing at the bottom of
this ocean.
I see green holes in you;
......
The sidewalks I was so familiar with are now rushing rivers.
The memories in these corners are fading away.
The air around me burning an invisible fire.
The end is here.
I see myself falling down an invisible cliff.
A never-ending darkness, with a growing fire at the bottom.
A roaring scream erupts as the flames rise to take me far away.
I melted with the fire, igniting my heart into streaks of blues and reds.
I am the fire.
......
Valentine’s Day.
She said no.
And not a nice no, a cold one.
The kind that makes the drive home feel like going to war.
Back then I lived in the basement
With a single egress window that would flood
When the downpour became a torrent.
I saw owl-gray clouds already.
Hell, the snow hadn’t even fully melted
......